We had some of the team from Fiera in to see us last week. As a reminder, Fiera (nee CGOV) manages the Steadyhand Equity Fund.

Although the name of the fund manager changed when CGOV was merged into Fiera, the personnel has remained the same. Gord O'Reilly, the 'O' in CGOV, manages our fund in collaboration with four other portfolio managers and analysts.

The team have been more active than usual over the last six months. Turnover (trading) in this fund is generally low, but when markets are volatile and stocks go on big runs (in either direction), we expect to see more movement.

With the strong rally this year, the activity in recent weeks has mostly been on the sell side. They've been trimming back on stocks that have become expensive for the right reasons (i.e. they've gone up). One such stock is CAE which is up 35% this year.

There have also been three switches of note:

• Evertz Technology was sold and replaced with Microsoft.
• CBOE Global Markets was shifted into a more diversified securities exchange, CME Group.
• And Fiera is de-emphasizing Novozymes and adding to CHR Hansen, a comparable but more innovative company.

On the more defensive side of the ledger, Fiera initiated a position in Telus, their preferred choice from the "telco oligopoly". The valuation is similar to Rogers and BCE but, in Fiera's view, Telus offers more growth.

Gord and the team won't always be this busy, but the markets have given them more opportunities.