A positive fourth quarter was not enough to offset the losses early on in 2022, capping off a year most investors would probably like to forget. There were plenty of reasons for markets to go down, including a pandemic that just won’t go away, a war causing havoc in the... read more →
Jan
19
Oct
20
The summer months took investors on a whirlwind ride of ups and downs, ultimately settling with most of our portfolio models flat to slightly down for the third quarter. Weakness in the U.S. equity market was more than offset by an incredibly strong performance by the U.S. dollar which rose... read more →
Jul
14
The first half of 2022 has been a pretty humbling experience for most investors. A collection of factors has combined to send all major investment benchmarks materially lower. Specifically, in the second quarter, U.S. equities suffered the biggest decline falling by 13.35%, followed closely by Canadian equities which sank by... read more →
May
13
It was about one year ago when inflationary pressures were being dismissed as “transitory”. Undoubtably, that was a terrible misjudgement by central bankers, but the logic used to make such an assessment was not incorrect. The most common definition of inflation is the year-over-year change in prices for goods and... read more →
Apr
14
There was no shortage of bad news for markets in the first quarter of 2022: a war in Ukraine that shows no clear signs of ending; a resurgence of the coronavirus which essentially shut down one of the largest cities in China; and inflationary pressures that continue to escalate globally.... read more →
Mar
25
Bonds have become unloved. In an investing world where the mentality is dictated by “What have you done for me lately?”, bonds do not have a strong argument. In Canada, bonds had a negative overall return in 2021 and underperformed equities by about 27.5%. The underperformance has continued thus far... read more →
Mar
14
Almost two years ago, panic amongst investors was surging on a global scale as the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic. Equity markets subsequently suffered the third worst decline in history as emotional fears and uncertainty affected rational decision making for many. Today, the pandemic still persists, but the... read more →
Feb
24
As many of you may be aware, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated to the point of military operations. Although this event has been building for some time, the most recent developments have had a material impact on financial markets and garnered international media attention. We wanted to... read more →
Jan
18
Another quarter of living through a global pandemic, another quarter of record-setting equity levels. Positive equity returns were recorded in all major regions in every quarter of 2021, resulting in some very strong gains for the full year. The main stock market indices for both Canada and the United States... read more →
Dec
02
The study of behavioural investing is a component of the broader category of behavioural economics. The field is a more modern area of research that does a good job of explaining why traditional economic and finance theories do not always hold. Traditional theories tend to focus on mathematical relationships and... read more →