Cutting Through the Noise
October 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 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 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...
Read MoreAugust 24, 2009
Being an analyst or portfolio manager means you are destined to make lots of mistakes. They say the great ones are right 60 per cent of the time, which means they're wrong 40 per cent of the time. There aren't too many professions where you're allowed...
Read MoreAugust 19, 2009
The Steadyhand Small-Cap Equity Fund has been one of the top funds in its category since it started in early 2007. But in getting there, the fund has traced quite a different path compared to that of the market and other small-cap funds. That's because the...
Read MoreAugust 12, 2009
I walked into the office this morning to the news that AIC, the troubled fund company owned by Michael Lee-Chin, has been sold to Manulife. I smiled. I always smile when I hear that more consolidation has occurred in the wealth management industry. That’s...
Read MoreAugust 9, 2009
It may not be politically correct to admit it, but I have mixed feelings on the billions of dollars worth of bonuses being paid out on Wall Street. I'm always wary of hysterical, highly politicized issues that have only one side to them. But in this case, I've...
Read MoreAugust 5, 2009
This current market rally has been characterized as ‘a dash for trash’. In other words, lower quality companies have seen their stocks bounce back dramatically, while the higher quality ones have experienced more modest gains. When the companies that...
Read MoreJuly 29, 2009
In my last posting, I talked about the questions that money managers should be asking. I focused on three – inflation, the next market leaders and valuation. There is an additional question that individual investors (and their advisors) should be asking...
Read MoreJuly 27, 2009
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business. Published July 25, 2009. Knowing the right questions to ask is an important and difficult part of any decision-making process. For the last two weeks I've been parked on the edge of Crystal Lake, Ont., where the right...
Read MoreJuly 13, 2009
A lot of thought has been going into the lessons learned from the recession. That's prompted me to think about what has come out of the turmoil in the capital markets. It didn't take long to come up with a list. Here are my top five lessons learned, or should...
Read MoreJuly 2, 2009
“Things will never be quite the same again. Western businesses in particular will be well served by moderating future expectations. That goes for investors too.” - Tim Price, PFP Wealth Management, June 22nd, 2009. I read Tim Price regularly and always...
Read MoreJune 27, 2009
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business. Published June 27, 2009. Over the past nine months, I've talked often in this space about risk being cheap. Investors can't let past losses blind them to the opportunities that have emerged from the banking crisis and...
Read MoreJune 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 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 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...
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