Cutting Through the Noise
May 6, 2013
In Saturday’s Report on Business, there was a remarkable table embedded in Rob Carrick’s article (How to Shelter Your Portfolio from a Housing Decline). It showed the top 10 Canadian equity funds (by assets) and the top 10 Canadian dividend income...
Read MoreMay 3, 2013
I thought a recent report from Mawer Investment Management captured well the opportunity, challenges and complexity of investing in the Asian markets. A paragraph from the conclusion summarizes their balanced optimism. Overall, we find ourselves...
Read MoreApril 30, 2013
We are currently seeking candidates for a permanent, full-time Investor Specialist. As part of this diverse role, the team member will work directly with clients to help them achieve their investment objectives. Direct industry experience is a requirement...
Read MoreApril 29, 2013
Lori and I attended a Celebration of Life for Art Phillips last Friday. (There was a wonderful obituary in the Globe and Mail last week.) Art founded Phillips, Hager & North in 1965 with the help of Bob Hager and Rudy North. It was Art’s reputation and wallet that got...
Read MoreApril 26, 2013
I’m pleased to introduce our newest member of the Steadyhand team, Jennifer Lacuesta. Jennifer is taking on the role of Client Service Administrator. She has close to 10 years of industry experience, having worked at Deutsche Bank (in the Philippines), GrowthWorks, and Haywood Securities. Jennifer will be playing an important role in many of our client service and trading functions, from processing...
Read MoreApril 25, 2013
My last post on gold spoke to the impact of investor sentiment on security prices. In the case of the shiny metal, sentiment is everything. As for other securities, such as bonds and stocks, it’s a secondary factor - economic fundamentals (profits)...
Read MoreApril 22, 2013
I’ll never forget an interview I did with Michael Hainsworth on BNN. It was almost exactly two years ago. Michael started the interview very directly, “Tell me, why no gold?” After I explained why our managers didn’t own any gold stocks, he then asked, “And no interest in base metals?” When I said we had no mining stocks in our funds, Michael was beside himself. “Do you at least own some energy stocks?” ...
Read MoreApril 19, 2013
We held our annual strategy session on Wednesday afternoon. Every year we lock ourselves in a room for 4-5 hours (or more), tune out the outside world, review the current state of our business and hash around ideas, thoughts and strategies on the...
Read MoreApril 17, 2013
It’s a sunny, spring day. The cherry blossoms are at their peak on West 3rd Avenue. Bob Hager’s daffodils are bursting out of our garden. David (in from Toronto for our annual strategy session) greets prospective clients with an enthusiastic, “Welcome to Steadyhand World Headquarters.” And the gentleman says, “Isn’t it a wonderful...
Read MoreApril 16, 2013
It was a strong start to the year for stocks around the globe, with the MSCI World Index gaining 10% (in Canadian dollar terms). U.S. and Japanese stocks were among the top performers, while Canada was one of the weaker performing markets (up 3%) as a result of its heavy weighting in gold and mining stocks. Bonds also had a positive quarter, albeit a much more modest one, led by a strengthening in corporate...
Read MoreApril 15, 2013
Last week, we filed a submission to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) on their Discussion Paper on mutual fund fees. If you have an interest in this topic, we’d encourage you to give it a read. If you’re a Steadyhand client and don’t have...
Read MoreApril 11, 2013
From our Quarterly Report: “The Dow hit a new high. How much further can the market go? … Alcoa is the first major corporation to report quarterly earnings and will set the tone for what’s to come … the technical indicators are telling us … time for a pullback ...
Read MoreApril 2, 2013
What came off as a well-crafted April Fools prank (it was Scott’s genius) has inadvertently served as a reminder of what our clients care about. In the Monthly Newsletter we sent out yesterday, we announced that Steadyhand had been sold to the Canadian...
Read MoreMarch 27, 2013
We’ve had a lot of calls lately from investors looking to purchase our funds through discount brokers. The questions often relate to availability, fees and fund codes. There seems to be some misinformation on the topic, so we felt it was a good time to...
Read MoreMarch 26, 2013
It’s stingy times for income investors. Government of Canada bonds are yielding less than 2% (5-year maturities are at 1.3% and 10-year maturities at 1.8%) and high quality corporate bonds are only 1-1.5% higher. Dividend-paying stocks are paying...
Read MoreMarch 21, 2013
Quick background: CGOV Asset Management is the manager of our Equity Fund. The firm has a distinct investment process, one facet of which is that they won’t own more than 25 stocks. We love this discipline as it ensures they focus on their best ideas and...
Read MoreMarch 19, 2013
The latest edition of The Economist has a special report on America’s competitiveness, titled Cheer Up. It examines the areas which are the “source of the most hand-wringing” among observers: innovation, energy, education, immigration, infrastructure...
Read MoreMarch 18, 2013
I recently attended a pension seminar. As part of the program, the organizers used a cool interactive polling system to gauge where the audience stood on certain issues. While there was plenty of good information provided throughout the morning, what stood out...
Read MoreMarch 13, 2013
I’ve been a bit of a downer lately, writing negatively about bonds and real estate, and pointing out that risk premiums (the opportunity to generate returns in excess of government bond yields) have narrowed for many other investment strategies. (Note...
Read MoreMarch 8, 2013
The latest Steadyhand T-shirt minces no words. In bold white letters on a black shirt are the words Scott came up with to describe our philosophy around stock investing – concentrate dammit! We’ve had lots of interesting reaction to the shirt, but the best comes from Winnipeg. Lori and I gave everyone in the family (who we thought might wear it) a shirt for Christmas, including our nephew Branton...
Read MoreMarch 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 MoreMarch 5, 2013
I came across a wonderful piece on the Blackstone Blog last week (I apologize, but I can’t remember who pointed me there). It’s entitled, ‘Byron Wien Discusses Lessons Learned in His First 80 Years’. As the title implies, Mr. Wien is an industry veteran and has lots...
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 26, 2013
Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are now a fixture on the investment landscape and are among the fastest growing investment products. There’s good reason for their rise in popularity: they’re simple, low cost, transparent and provide market-like returns. But ... they’re not for everyone. In a newly updated paper, we compare the experience of an ETF investor (Jake) to that of a Steadyhand client (Julie). There are notable...
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