Blog: Cutting Through the Noise

Federal Government Gets a Failing Grade on Transparency

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on May 17, 2012

In this space, we talk a lot about transparency, and we try our best to walk the talk. There was a piece by Barrie McKenna in the Globe and Mail this week about the Federal government’s transparency around financial reporting. The conclusion: If the...

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Covered Call ETFs: Are They for You?

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on May 12, 2012

A long-standing investment strategy is back in vogue. “Covered call writing” is designed to generate income from a stock by selling a call option against it (the right to buy the stock at a set price in the future). While the strategy has been around forever...

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Finding a Better Balance

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on May 10, 2012

In recent presentations, we’ve been discussing a slide that shows the industry diversification of the Founders Fund versus the S&P/TSX Composite Index. We’ve been doing this admittedly ‘apples to oranges’ comparison because it highlights what the portfolios...

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Industry Changes - The Next 5 Years

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 30, 2012

The wealth management industry has changed a lot since we started Steadyhand five years ago. The banks have strengthened their hold on asset management, low-cost ETFs and high-cost structured products have become more prominent (and numerous) and lower-volatility income products are now the big seller. Some of the changes have been good for client returns, while others were more attuned to company profits...

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Why the Smart Money is Cutting Back on Bonds

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 28, 2012

As your buy side correspondent, I make a point of reading a whole stack of investment manager reports each quarter. I particularly focus on managers who think long term (no frequent traders), are prone to non-consensus views and aren't afraid...

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Canadian Real Estate - More Reasons for Caution

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 25, 2012

Last Sunday, while flying to the hottest housing market in Canada (Toronto), my airplane reading surfaced a couple more statistics about Canadian housing, both of which point towards caution. In their quarterly report, Mawer Investment Management noted...

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Lessons Learned in the Wealth Management Trenches

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 14, 2012

We’re celebrating our firm’s fifth birthday this week, which has brought on lots of reflection. Before we started up, I sought counsel from as many people as possible under the theory that if you want money, ask for advice. As it turned out, I got little money...

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My Toughest Five Months

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 10, 2012

“If the bear leans on you, hold your ground.” Are these words of advice from an investment guru like Buffett, Watsa or Hager? No, they’re instructions from the trainer of Koda, my big furry friend who appeared with me in the video on our original home page. As it turned out, the trainer’s words would quickly become as relevant...

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Whose Interests?

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 4, 2012

The investment banking league tables came out this week and they showed that Scotia Capital was at the top of the equity list. BNS was lead underwriter on $2.4 billion worth of deals in the first quarter. What pushed them to the top was a $1.66 billion stock...

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A Contrarian's Radar Says Cheez Whiz Yes, China No

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 1, 2012

I’m wired to be a contrarian. That means I tend to be early getting on and off trends. I was worried about the U.S. housing cycle in 2004 and thought the Rolling Stones were over the hill two decades ago (was I wrong?). I’m still calling for Cheez Whiz to...

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Are Bonds the Safe Haven They Appear?

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on March 27, 2012

This was the heading on a slide that Connor, Clark & Lunn showed us this morning during our quarterly review of the Income Fund. The chart (below) shows the path of a Government of Canada 10-year bond yield compared to the commonly-used indicator of inflation in Canada, the Consumer Price Index. After 31 years of declining...

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Tie Breaker

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on March 21, 2012

In his column in today’s Financial Post ('Doing all of the Right Things'), Jonathan Chevreau reviews Steadyhand. The article is a book end of sorts, because Jonathan was the first one to write about us in the summer of 2006, just as our business model...

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