Cutting Through the Noise
May 13, 2011
Personal disclosure: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool active manager, but admit to having used exchange-traded funds in my portfolio. I’ve tread on the dark side for tax planning purposes and, occasionally, to hedge certain long-term positions. I also must...
Read MoreApril 29, 2011
I’ve enjoyed watching the federal election campaign, but that’s where it ends. It will have no impact on markets (for more than a day), and my interest in being a public official has never been lower (it’s a brutal job). The office I’m interested in running for, however, is...
Read MoreApril 15, 2011
Value managers make a habit of scanning the 'new lows' list on the stock page. They’re hoping to find good companies that have stumbled and are oversold. Buyers of the funds run by those same managers, however, rarely do that. They most often go for the...
Read MoreApril 1, 2011
In Toronto last week, I was waiting for a friend at my Starbucks office. As I browsed the Sports section, I couldn’t help but overhear a nearby conversation between two investment types. The checked shirt was leading the discussion. “My overweight in...
Read MoreMarch 18, 2011
Over the last two years, I’ve spent most of my time encouraging people to get invested. As a result of the 2008-09 market meltdown, there were, and still are, too many investors who have strayed significantly from their long-term asset mix and are out of the...
Read MoreMarch 4, 2011
In addition to my day job, I sit on investment committees for two institutional funds, so every quarter there is a pile of manager reports to read and many different perspectives to assimilate. Unfortunately, if I try to do too much in a short time, as I did this week...
Read MoreFebruary 18, 2011
“Risk-free investing. Yes, it does exist.” These words are featured prominently in a financial institution’s ads we’re seeing this season. And every time I see them, it sets me off. Why? Because investing is all about taking risk. Without it, we get risk-free...
Read MoreFebruary 4, 2011
Bay Street, we have a problem. A PR problem. Our clients think we can do more than we’re capable of. Some think we know which stocks are going up and when to get in and out of the market. We’re setting them up for disappointment and as a...
Read MoreJanuary 21, 2011
On the buy side, we have a love/hate relationship with our stars. We’re happy when they put big return numbers up on the board, bring recognition to our firms and attract new assets. We don’t like it, however, when we become too dependent on them. Then...
Read MoreJanuary 7, 2011
“Finding the right answers is easy. Asking the right questions is the hard part.” As we open our calendars on 2011, this old adage has never been more apt. We’re being buffeted with crosswinds and it’s not obvious which ones will affect investment...
Read MoreDecember 24, 2010
Hindsight bias: The inclination to see events that have occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place. That’s Wikipedia’s definition of a behavioural weakness we all have. We take credit for having seen something...
Read MoreDecember 10, 2010
We’re going through another wave of consolidation in the asset management industry. Last summer, Sceptre Investment Counsel merged into Fiera Capital. More recently, CI Financial bought Hartford’s mutual funds, Bank of Nova Scotia made an offer for DundeeWealth...
Read MoreNovember 26, 2010
In investing, it’s easy to mistake a transient trend for an eternal verity. Right now, for instance, many investors are tacitly assuming that China will grow at 10 per cent forever. Same goes for the notion that we’re running out of oil, that gold is the best store of...
Read MoreNovember 12, 2010
It’s only been 18 months since the nadir of our once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis, but it feels like we’re already forgetting some of the lessons learned. I’m referring to the fact that, in this market full of cross currents, we have another major asset class getting...
Read MoreOctober 29, 2010
Whenever one investment theme, strategy or person is in the spotlight, it’s important to look in the shadows for a different perspective. That’s because as voices get louder and more confident, a consensus emerges that makes it harder to find the...
Read MoreOctober 15, 2010
When investors open their quarterly statements this month, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. Despite all the doom and gloom, the last three months have brought a year’s worth of returns. But despite the fact that the most recent quarter will bring...
Read MoreOctober 1, 2010
“Maybe you might have, some advice to give, on how to be insensitive.” The chorus from this great Jann Arden song speaks to where the investment industry has gone over the last 20 years. I’m not referring to touchy-feely, relationship stuff, but rather a hard...
Read MoreSeptember 30, 2010
As part of the Globe & Mail redesign, my Buy Side column will appear in the Friday paper (as of October 1st). It's published every second week. As always, the columns will be posted on the Blog later the same the day.
Read MoreSeptember 18, 2010
Every summer Lori and I make a pilgrimage to the famous Highland Cinema in Kinmount, Ont. This summer’s movie was Inception. While I had mixed feelings about the film (movie – 2 stars; conversation after – 4 stars), I found the...
Read MoreSeptember 4, 2010
One of the joys of my day job is talking with smart, turned-on people from all aspects and levels of the investment business. My good fortune comes from having a long and diverse career (as Woody Allen put it, 90 per cent of life is just showing...
Read MoreAugust 21, 2010
Portfolio management is both a science and an art. The science can be learned from finance professors and investment books. The art part, however, comes from years at the school of hard knocks. Like every grizzled money manager who’s...
Read MoreAugust 9, 2010
In my last column I talked about fear and investors who wanted to get out of the market. My advice (don’t do it) was based on valuation, investor sentiment and the difficulty of timing the market. It was aimed at helping the investor make the best decision. But...
Read MoreJuly 24, 2010
In my quarterly letter to clients I used the word “discouraged” to describe investor sentiment. In the few days since we published it, however, I’m starting to think a better word is “despair.” Too regularly I’m being asked whether it’s time to get out of the...
Read MoreJuly 10, 2010
I’ve had a bias to owning higher quality companies since 2007. In a challenging economy with unpredictable credit markets, it seemed reasonable to pay a premium for stable profits, excess cash flow and strong balance sheets. I knew the companies...
Read MoreJune 27, 2010
There has never been more investment information available to investors, so it’s frustrating to see the release of the Morningstar Stewardship Grades, the most useful piece of research to come out in decades, slide by with little or no coverage from...
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