by Richard Phillips, Chief Investment Officer and Zachary Schwartz, Client Relations Executive Summary Significant return dispersion amongst alternative asset managers underscores the importance of thoughtful selection and de-selection within our Alternative Yield strategies The macro environment impacts both asset allocation and manager selection choices A holistic approach to manager selection involves analysis of running yield, […]
by Richard Phillips, Chief Investment Officer and Kevin Muir, CFA, Market Strategist Executive Summary Canadian preferred shares have underperformed bond portfolios over the past two decades. Combined with higher volatility, this poor performance has resulted in a considerably lower Sharpe ratio for preferred shares. Although specific preferred issues might offer opportunities, there are most likely […]
by Richard Phillips, Chief Investment Officer and Kevin Muir, CFA, Market Strategist Executive Summary Portfolios need to be periodically rebalanced to ensure they maintain asset allocations dictated by the investor. These rebalancings have the added benefits of often increasing total return. Most importantly, regular rebalancing results in a reduction of portfolio volatility. According to Modern […]
by Richard Phillips, Chief Investment Officer and Kevin Muir, CFA, Market Strategist Executive Summary Market-capitalized stock indices are the benchmark for passive investing. Equal-weighted stock indices have outperformed market-capitalized indices, and with slightly less volatility. The difficulty in executing this strategy lies in the large drawdown periods when equal-weighted indices underperform the benchmark. For individual […]
Today, if the US and Canadian markets were to close the year where they are currently trading, it would mark a very unusual development. In the past three decades, there has never been an instance when both stocks and bonds have had negative return years. Yet here we are with the U.S. stock market hovering around zero while bonds are showing a negative return of almost 200 basis points.
