Cutting Through the Noise
March 7, 2013
I’ve been highlighting a number of asset classes where the risk premiums - the opportunity to achieve returns above government bonds - have narrowed. My focus has been on income securities, but I’ve poked my nose in on residential real estate as well...
Read MoreFebruary 28, 2013
In a ‘Live from the Desk’ posting on the Vertex website (a Vancouver-based fund manager), readers get to experience a typical day on the bond desk from the perspective of new issues. Bond investors are seeing corporation after corporation coming to market...
Read MoreFebruary 27, 2013
I’m hearing rumblings that the investment industry is going to fight back on some of the new regulations that the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) are proposing around performance and fee disclosure. Last week’s full page ad in the National...
Read MoreFebruary 22, 2013
Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO and Co-chief Investment Officer of PIMCO, is a regular contributor to the Financial Times. In his piece today, he opines that the U.S. Federal Reserve will not seek an early end to quantitative easing (QE). For me, the most...
Read MoreFebruary 21, 2013
The Canadian clients of Ally Financial got news this week that the sale of the firm to RBC has been completed, the interest rate on their high-interest savings accounts is being reduced from 1.8% to 1.2%, and their accounts will be closed on April 30th, as reported...
Read MoreJanuary 11, 2013
I guess I’m more optimistic than executives at the major banks. When we lose a client (we’ve been lucky so far, our clients have been very loyal), I fully expect she/he will come back one day when circumstances change. As a result, when a client takes money...
Read MoreJanuary 10, 2013
Having been early and loud with my concerns about Canadian housing prices, I’m following with interest the daily coverage of the residential real estate market. I have a few thoughts on what I’ve read so far. Despite all the front page coverage, the...
Read MoreDecember 27, 2012
The Investor Education Fund (a non-profit organization funded by the Ontario Securities Commission) has a cool interactive chart on their website that shows the historical returns – from 1935 to 2012 – of various stock markets, bonds and T-Bills, along with...
Read MoreDecember 12, 2012
In a recent Globe column, I highlighted a consensus among money managers that interest rates are unsustainably low - short and mid-term Government of Canada bonds are trading at negative ‘real’ yields (after inflation). The argument goes that at some...
Read MoreDecember 4, 2012
There have been a number of articles recently on U.S. homebuilders. There are increasing signs that housing activity is picking up (albeit from near-dormant levels) and the indexes that track stocks related to the industry have doubled over the last year. This sector is a great illustration of how the stock market is always looking forward. When this latest run started last fall, the news on housing (resales, starts...
Read MoreNovember 26, 2012
The federal government announced today that the annual contribution limit for the TFSA is being increased from $5,000 to $5,500, starting in 2013. A feature of the TFSA is that the annual contribution limit is indexed to inflation, in $500 increments. 2013 will be...
Read MoreNovember 16, 2012
You’ve likely heard the term fiscal cliff lately. A catchy, if not chilling phrase, but what does it mean? Put simply, it refers to the combination of (1) billions of dollars of tax increases and (2) widespread spending cuts to government programs, all set to take effect on...
Read MoreNovember 15, 2012
It just got a little greener in Seattle. Bloomberg reported last week that Microsoft recently raised $2.25 billion by issuing 5, 10 and 30-year bonds. And they did it on the cheap. The 5-year notes were issued at 0.875%, the 10-year bonds at 2.125%, and the 30-year...
Read MoreNovember 13, 2012
For keen investors and/or students of the investment industry, I recommend reading a speech (Surviving Success) given this past summer by Richard Rooney, the Chief Investment Officer of Burgundy Asset Management. Richard was speaking to an...
Read MoreNovember 5, 2012
“It’s been a long, hard slog for [global] value stocks lately. I’d say we’re long overdue for a value recovery ...” These words from AllianceBernstein (a global asset management firm) echo the sentiment of our global manager, Edinburgh Partners. In a recent article...
Read MoreOctober 30, 2012
I had lunch last week at the Fairmont with Nassim Taleb, prominent financial author and professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (there were a few hundred other people there too; it was an event put on by the Vancouver CFA Society). Taleb’s...
Read MoreOctober 17, 2012
“Small Caps will Outperform Soon.” I read this headline yesterday and it reminded me how different our approach to investing is than most other managers. The accompanying article suggested that investors’ appetite for risk is coming back and commodity...
Read MoreOctober 12, 2012
This week Morningstar Canada, a leading provider of independent investment research, updated its Stewardship Grades for 2012. The grades were first introduced in Canada in 2010 (they’ve been published in the U.S. since 2004) as a means of capturing some...
Read MoreOctober 2, 2012
In last Saturday’s Report of Business, Rob Carrick wrote an article about low volatility mutual funds (The Hidden Dangers in Playing it Safe). The Steadyhand Equity Fund was one of six funds he highlighted as having a positive return over the last five years...
Read MoreSeptember 29, 2012
Last week in Toronto, I had back-to-back meetings that provided an intriguing juxtaposition. I first met with Joe Sirdevan, the former head of research at Jarislowsky Fraser, who is starting a new firm, Galibier Capital, and then spent some time...
Read MoreSeptember 26, 2012
Forbes magazine came up with a list of the 15 most outrageous ETFs last year. The winners included the Market Vectors Mongolia ETF, the PowerShares Lux Nano Tech ETF and the HealthShares Dermatology and Wound Care ETF. We thought we’d...
Read MoreSeptember 20, 2012
Hard to believe, but we’ve been blogging for 6 years now. Time flies when you’re having fun. We use our blog as an outlet for our opinions, advice to investors, stance on industry issues, and the odd piece of wit (depending on your definition). One of the key objectives of our firm is to help make our clients better investors, and the blog is one of the tools we use in this pursuit. We're encouraged that more and more...
Read MoreSeptember 16, 2012
Big changes are in the regulatory winds and they’re going to be good for Canadians. The new rules that are coming down relating to cost disclosure, performance reporting and client statements are likely to have more impact on individual investors...
Read MoreSeptember 6, 2012
There was an article by David Berman in the Report on Business yesterday pointing out how bearish Wall Street strategists are these days (Time to Buy as Pros Turn Bearish). As a group, their recommended stock weighting is 44.4%, which is near its lowest level since 1985. This compares to a long-term average of 60-65%. In the...
Read MoreAugust 30, 2012
Scotiabank announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement to buy ING Bank of Canada for $3.1 billion. ING (Canada) put itself up for sale earlier this summer because its parent, Dutch-based ING Groep NV, is looking for funds to repay government...
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