Cutting Through the Noise
November 4, 2009
Housing stocks make me squeamish. It was painful to watch them fall like a rock over the last couple of years as the U.S. real estate market imploded. A number of companies faced bankruptcy or saw their share prices slashed due to stretched balance sheets...
Read MoreNovember 1, 2009
When you're trick or treating, keep an eye out for mutual funds dressed up as closed-end funds. The latest innovation to take hold in the Canadian wealth management industry is “closed-until-open” funds. There has been a wave of new offerings that...
Read MoreOctober 30, 2009
We could’ve had some fun with a list of the scariest Halloween costumes this year. Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford and Jon & Kate come to mind. But we thought it would be more educational, and just as fun, to highlight some of this year’s scariest investments...
Read MoreOctober 29, 2009
In a recent article written about Steadyhand titled "Mischievous Strangers and a Steadyhand", Karin Mizgala draws a connection between Tom Bradley and Charles Dickens. Very flattering. Especially when compared to some of the other comparisons...
Read MoreOctober 28, 2009
Quick. It’s February 28th, 2010. The Olympics are just ending and you have to make a last minute RRSP contribution. What would you do? Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Time is up. OK. If you answered: Put it in the Money Market Fund and think about...
Read MoreOctober 26, 2009
The preacher: Tim Price, Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in the U.K. The converted: Steadyhand, Manager of the ‘undex’ funds. As noted in previous posts, I enjoy reading Mr. Price’s weekly note. He challenges the conventional thinking that...
Read MoreOctober 22, 2009
I’ve had lots of feedback on a posting I did on Balanced Funds – some as comments on the blog and other as feedback to me directly. A comment from a reader aptly named You Missed The Point said, “A good balanced fund with low fees and experienced with...
Read MoreOctober 20, 2009
Tom recently sat down with Larry Lunn, the Chairman and founder of Connor, Clark & Lunn (CC&L), to talk shop. At the front end of the podcast, Larry discusses where we are in the economic recovery and his view on [the hot topic of] inflation. He then addresses...
Read MoreOctober 18, 2009
Tom was on Business News Network (BNN) on Friday talking about finding a balance between domestic and foreign investments (his Saturday Globe column focuses on the same topic). Canadian investors have an emphasis on Canadian securities...
Read MoreOctober 18, 2009
Oh Canada! In the constant debate about whether this rally is for real or not, there is an underlying subtext. It relates to how much emphasis investors should put on Canada. In the discussion, there are many who are asking the question, why bother putting...
Read MoreOctober 9, 2009
In this podcast, Tom and I review the third quarter of 2009. It was another strong period for equities. U.S. stocks posted their best quarter in a decade, while the TSX and many overseas markets posted double-digit returns. A rising loonie negatively impacted...
Read MoreOctober 6, 2009
In her Mutual Fund column in the October MoneySense magazine, Suzane Abboud looked at what balanced funds did through the market crisis, specifically how they managed their asset mix. A big part of the reason for owning a balanced fund is...
Read MoreOctober 3, 2009
One of the really fun events on the Street is the “Up the Down Market” dinner held annually in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal in support of the Down Syndrome Research Foundation. The focus of the evening is a game based on a stock market...
Read MoreOctober 2, 2009
In a recent posting (Complacency: A Major Misstep of Mutual Fund Investors), I talked about how commonplace fund mergers and manager changes have become in our industry. I referred to manager changes at Trimark, fund mergers at Ethical and...
Read MoreSeptember 28, 2009
I don’t believe in trying to precisely time the market. For our clients’ portfolios, and my own, I strive to be approximately right, as opposed to exactly wrong. Having said that, last fall and early this year we were as aggressive as we'll ever be in pushing clients...
Read MoreSeptember 23, 2009
A Steadyhand advertising campaign is starting today. It’s pretty extensive, but not all of you will see it. That’s because the magazine, newspaper, television and on-line ads are targeted at Southern Ontario (more on that later). I never thought we’d be advertising...
Read MoreSeptember 21, 2009
In a nutshell, it all comes down to a few self-centered questions. Is this the way we want our money managed? Is this who we want doing it? Is this the way we want to be serviced, charged and communicated to? Call us selfish, but the answers to those...
Read MoreSeptember 19, 2009
Individual investors (and their advisers) are far too patient when it comes to dealing with changes in their mutual funds. They're quick to make moves based on short-term trends and performance, but slow to recognize the impact of fundamental shifts in personnel...
Read MoreSeptember 16, 2009
I read that the recession is over. Both Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, and Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada Governor, have said so. I also read that out here on the wet coast, our provincial government has been dragging its...
Read MoreSeptember 15, 2009
Nokia is an interesting story. To many North Americans, the company is viewed as a has-been. While its cell phones may have been all the rage a decade ago, its star has fallen considerably as Apple and RIM have taken over as the market leaders thanks to...
Read MoreSeptember 9, 2009
On my recent trip to Toronto, I spent some time at the CGOV office, meeting with Gord O’Reilly, the manager of the Equity Fund, as well as other partners of the firm. Out of all the conversations, pizza and beer came very little that was new - even though...
Read MoreSeptember 8, 2009
The Globe and Mail ran an article yesterday on how money market funds are holding up given the historically low interest rate environment (The Best and Worst Places to Park Your Cash). The article highlighted our Savings Fund as the top performing fund...
Read MoreSeptember 5, 2009
I feel like I'm really up to speed right now. With the lousy weather in Ontario and Manitoba cottage country, there's been more time for reading. And while I still can't tell you what “quantitative easing” is, I've firmed up my view on all kinds of other topics...
Read MoreAugust 27, 2009
In postings on March 31st and May 14th, I mused that the financial crisis and market meltdown had turned everybody into an economist. We all have a view on how deep the recession will be, where the dollar is headed and when the recovery will come...
Read MoreAugust 26, 2009
Be warned. I write this after a long day, a glass of wine and having just read an article on ‘Target Date’ funds in Monday’s Report on Business (Target-date Funds Miss Their Mark). Shirley Won’s piece on these packaged, marketing-driven, fee-laden...
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