Cutting Through the Noise
June 24, 2009
We need your help Aretha! It seems that the little Canadian technology company that could, Research in Motion, has trouble getting respect. This is hardly a statistically robust analysis, but it has been evident to me for years that RIM and its hugely...
Read MoreJune 18, 2009
Christine Montgomery from Edinburgh Partners, the manager of our Global Equity Fund, has been traveling in North America this week meeting with companies (research) and clients (hand-holding). We dragged her out of the San Francisco fog and welcomed her to...
Read MoreJune 16, 2009
Panic is a compilation of articles that shed light on the most severe upheavals in recent financial history – the crash of ’87, the Russian default and subsequent collapse of Long Term Capital Management, the Asian currency...
Read MoreJune 14, 2009
I'm not a hedge fund manager, but I find their place in the industry to be forever fascinating. Indeed, this week I went so far as to publicly debate the proposition “Hedge funds are dead” with Toreigh Stuart of Man Investments, a hedge fund conglomerate...
Read MoreJune 10, 2009
Be it resolved that hedge funds are dead - or at least the model as we know it needs to change. This is the position that Tom Bradley argued in a debate yesterday at a luncheon held by the Alternative Investment Management Association (Canada’s...
Read MoreJune 8, 2009
Last week Chris and I met with Scott Robertson, a financial planner from Ottawa. Scott is a veteran and has a straight-forward, no-nonsense approach to his craft. That was clear when we asked him when and how often his clients re-balance their portfolios...
Read MoreJune 4, 2009
People are having trouble with this rally. Indeed, I admitted to being uneasy about the speed and magnitude of the market’s move in a recent post. What’s spooking people is that it’s happening at a time when the economy is in the dumper and it's not clear...
Read MoreMay 30, 2009
As our firm passes the two-year mark, we aren't able to generalize about where our clients are coming from or why they chose us, but we can make some observations about what their previous portfolios looked like, and more broadly, the state of the...
Read MoreMay 28, 2009
“Fess up, fellows: The masters of the universe have turned out to be masters of disaster. No matter which aspect of the financial crisis you consider, there is a man behind it.” This was the opening paragraph of an article recently posted in the Wall Street Journal that reinforces our view that women are great investors, and even better...
Read MoreMay 26, 2009
The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (Teachers) came within a hair of buying BCE at $42.75. Clearly the powers that be at Teachers thought enough of the BCE franchise that they were willing to pay up for it and use substantial amounts of leverage...
Read MoreMay 23, 2009
In 26 years of doing this, one of the phrases I find least useful is, the market “is range bound” or “will stay in a narrow trading range over the next X months”. I don’t have conclusive data on it, but I believe that these types of predictions are almost...
Read MoreMay 21, 2009
Blogger Canadian Capitalist published a complimentary posting on Steadyhand the other day. He highlighted four aspects of our firm that we emphasize on our website and in our conversations with investors: Low cost, Concentration, Co-investment...
Read MoreMay 19, 2009
Stock markets have rebounded 25-35% since the lows reached in March. Feeling uneasy about the recent bounce? In this podcast, Tom expands on his recent Globe and Mail column and provides some advice to investors who are unsure what to do...
Read MoreMay 16, 2009
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business. Published May 16, 2009. What do we do now? Has the market gone too far too fast? Is it projecting too robust an economic recovery? Is it going to give back its gains as corporate earnings continue to disappoint? Or is...
Read MoreMay 14, 2009
As I pointed out in a recent post, we all have a tendency to become economists at extreme times like this. Everyone has a view on the economy, the dollar, Ben Bernanke, U.S. consumer debt and Wall Street’s demise. And with our increased focus comes...
Read MoreMay 13, 2009
Morningstar recently published a comprehensive report on the ‘investment climate’ for mutual fund investors titled Global Fund Investor Experience. The report analyzes the fund marketplace in a number of countries around the world, highlighting the strengths...
Read MoreMay 8, 2009
That’s my answer when asked where the dollar is going. As regular readers know, I’m not short on opinions, nor is it the case that I’m not well informed on the economic and political forces at work. I just think predicting currency movements is impossible...
Read MoreMay 7, 2009
We’ve been advising clients that safety is expensive these days. In other words, investors are getting paid very little for holding low-risk assets such as money market products and government bonds. The counterpoint is that the latter securities...
Read MoreMay 5, 2009
A writer in the Financial Times this morning suggested that BMW and Mercedes need to worry about scale. With Fiat and Porsche playing the role of consolidators, the auto industry is going to have fewer, larger players. Therefore, as the logic goes...
Read MoreMay 3, 2009
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business. Published May 2, 2009. Last week I was at the Richard Ivey School of Business speaking to an investing class. It is part of the Benjamin Graham Centre for Value Investing, which has grown in international...
Read MoreApril 29, 2009
The 2009 Lipper Awards have been announced and the ads and emails have started. There will be a rush of fund firms announcing the loot they've collected. Last year we had some fun with our industry's 'silly season'. We announced our own LIPPY Awards...
Read MoreApril 27, 2009
Michael Nairne and his partner (in all respects) Joanne Swystun started a firm called Tacita Capital in 2006. It is a family office for “exceptionally affluent families.” Tacita publishes research pieces from time to time, the latest of which was recently...
Read MoreApril 22, 2009
Many studies on active vs. passive management draw the conclusion that the latter strategy (more commonly known as ‘indexing’) is superior because it generates higher returns. Notwithstanding the ‘sloppiness’ of some of these comparisons, it is true that many...
Read MoreApril 18, 2009
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business. Published April 18, 2009. Let me set the scene. A generic portfolio manager enters a psychiatrist's office and starts talking. Let's be a fly on the wall. Thank you for seeing me, doctor. Sure, I can lie down on the couch...
Read MoreApril 17, 2009
There was great news today. The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) released a proposal to enhance disclosure requirements for over-the-counter (OTC) trades, including bonds. IIROC is one of two regulatory bodies for...
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