Cutting Through the Noise
January 7, 2010
Mercer, the pension and benefits consultant, reported this week that the funding status of Canadian pension plans improved dramatically in 2009. Its ‘pension health index’ moved up from 59 to 74, meaning that for a typical plan, 74% of the pension liabilities...
Read MoreJanuary 6, 2010
There is an interesting business case playing out in the U.S. right now with Kraft Foods attempting to takeover Cadbury. The saga started 4 months ago when Kraft made a hostile bid. Cadbury’s board rejected the cash and shares offer, but by then the...
Read MoreDecember 29, 2009
I love reading sports statistics and box scores (the Suns beat the Lakers last night and Nash had 16 points, 13 assists and was 5 for 11 from the field), but I’ve never been much for economic data. Yesterday on the plane, however, I was scanning the economic...
Read MoreDecember 26, 2009
We'll be turning the calendar to a new decade in a few days and I've been asking people for their take on it. The response has been underwhelming. Seems nobody has thought about it and a few were even caught off-guard, saying only, “Has it really been 10...
Read MoreDecember 16, 2009
Maybe the hardest conversations we have today are with prospective investors who got out of equities in 2008 or early this year and did not get back in. What do they do now? There is really just one answer to the question and then a bunch of execution issues...
Read MoreDecember 14, 2009
John Bogle starts his latest book, Enough, with a great story. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party hosted by a hedge fund manager. Mr. Vonnegut muses that their host makes more money in a day than Mr. Heller earned from his wildly successful novel...
Read MoreDecember 10, 2009
Interest rates have a profound effect on portfolio returns. The level of rates sets a base for on-going income and changes in rates affects security prices. As rates drop, bond prices rise and vice versa. The 25-year bull market for bonds and stocks that...
Read MoreDecember 8, 2009
When I was working at Richardson Greenshields in the 80’s, my partners and I watched as all of our big competitors got bought up by the banks – Gundy went to CIBC, DS to Royal, McLeod to Scotia and Nesbitt to BMO. As one of the largest independents left...
Read MoreDecember 3, 2009
Chris, Sher and I were out meeting prospective clients last week and there were a few questions/concerns that came up over and over again. For the most part we have discussed them in the blog, but it struck me that we could be more direct in...
Read MoreDecember 2, 2009
If this month is like previous years, the content in the business publications and industry research will get less and less relevant as we move towards the New Year. Around Christmas the papers and on-line sources will be peppered with fluffy year-end pieces...
Read MoreNovember 28, 2009
Note to reader: I have an axe to grind. I own and operate a low-cost mutual fund company – and I'm hopping mad about the HST. The impact of Ontario and British Columbia's harmonized sales tax will be negative for investors. No matter who you...
Read MoreNovember 19, 2009
In my recent article, The Party is Rolling Again, so be Cautious, I throw a little cold water on the market rally we’re enjoying. I think it’s important to reiterate how a view like this relates to an investor’s asset mix. The key line in the article is near the end – “I've...
Read MoreNovember 18, 2009
Invesco Trimark announced this week that it is offering a new series of mutual funds based on existing exchange traded funds (ETFs) offered by an affiliated company, U.S.-based PowerShares (both companies are owned by the asset management...
Read MoreNovember 15, 2009
Here I go again. Just when everyone is starting to enjoy themselves, I'm getting uneasy. It's time for investors to temper their expectations for returns and prepare for some bumps in the road. This doesn't mean the cycle isn't playing out as it should. The...
Read MoreNovember 12, 2009
The manager of our Global Equity Fund, Edinburgh Partners Ltd. (EPL), has had a personnel change that is of interest to Steadyhand clients. Christine Montgomery has left EPL and joined another firm in Edinburgh, Martin Currie. While the firms are comparable...
Read MoreNovember 10, 2009
In the Economics Focus column in the October 31st Economist magazine, the question is asked, “Why are the banks so averse to raising equity?” It’s a great question, particularly in the aftermath of last year’s worldwide banking meltdown. It has been a...
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 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 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 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...
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