Blog: Cutting Through the Noise
Industry News + Views
The Dividend Dance
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on 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 More
A Report from the Front Lines
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on May 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 More
Lessons From a Legend
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 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 More
Fixed Income = Broken Sentiment?
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 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 More
Gold - A Dizzying Change in Sentiment
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 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?” ...
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Mutual Fund Fees - Desperate Need for Change
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 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 More
Purchasing Steadyhand through Discount Brokers - Clearing the Air
Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on March 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 More
Distributions: Cut it Out
Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on March 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 More
A Strong Consensus on Interest Rates
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on March 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 More
Commercial Real Estate - Not Lost in Translation
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on 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 More
Two Sides of the Coin
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on February 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 More
Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight
Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on February 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 More
