Volatility picked up in Q4 as the underlying strength of the economic recovery was challenged by Omicron and persistently high inflation, which has prompted central banks to discuss interest rate increases. Meanwhile, existing government stimulus measures have been winding down and renewed stimulus ...

Coming into this quarter, markets had already priced in much of the good news. Support from governments and central banks, effective vaccines, economic reopening, strong consumer balance sheets and an expectation this money would unleash a wave of spending. We believe this thesis is still intact, bu...

2020 was a roller-coaster for investors who experienced one of the sharpest contractions and subsequent rebounds in history. Looking back, it’s easy to forget just how scary March was and think the subsequent recovery was obvious and predictable, but hindsight is 2020 (sorry, I couldn’t...

With covid-19 cases rising, promising developments on the vaccine front and US election results, we thought it was a good time to provide a brief market update.

Let’s start with the bad news; cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all trending worryingly higher. This has led to restrictions and targ...

Markets climbed ever higher in Q3 on the back of ongoing monetary and fiscal stimulus from central banks and governments. Balanced portfolios saw gains in the mid single digits as every asset class posted positive returns for the quarter.

While returns since markets bottomed in March have been signif...

As always, I like to start off each quarterly commentary discussing how the market has performed, then we’ll talk about the outlook. Q1 2020 has been a rough ride for investors to put it mildly. We experienced the fastest bear market in history with global markets falling roughly 30% in less than 1 ...

Investors have just experienced one of the fastest bear market sell-offs in history. It seems like a distant memory, but Canadian equity markets peaked just one month ago on February 20, 2020. Since then Canadian stocks are down a third (33%), and Canadian energy is off two thirds (66%)! The speed a...

There’s a lot of misconceptions regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19), so I want to devote the first part of this commentary towards education. Then we will discuss the financial implications and what we’re doing in our investment portfolios.

UNDERSTANDING COVID-19

Q4 2019 brought investors more positive returns to close out an exceptional year. In fact, in 2019 every major asset class was up, giving balanced investors double digit returns for the year. This was achieved with relatively low risk, as returns were positive in 10 out of 12 months.

WHERE WE STAND T...

During this quarter, investors have been bombarded with negative headlines including the trade war, inverted yield curve, negative interest rates, Hong Kong protests, Brexit, Saudi oil attacks and the recent impeachment inquiry. Given all this you might be surprised to learn market performance was s...

It's been a tough couple of weeks in the markets and I think the reasons are best summed up by Bloomberg’s “Wall of Worry”.

After 4 straight months of gains starting in January, markets pulled back in May as trade talks between the US and China deteriorated. June saw markets recover as the Federal Reserve signaled they would halt interest rate increases, and possibly cut them in order to stimulate the economy if nee...