Blog: Cutting Through the Noise

Balanced Income Portfolio: A Performance Assessment

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on January 26, 2012

Last week we published a report on how to assess your portfolio’s performance (How is My Portfolio Doing?). Today we’re releasing a supplementary report that uses the framework to assess the performance of the Steadyhand Balanced Income Portfolio...

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How is Your Portfolio Doing? Version 2.0

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on January 18, 2012

Early last year we published a report on how to assess your portfolio’s performance. The paper laid out a framework for evaluating your investments, focusing on five areas: gathering the facts, reviewing the market environment, analyzing the numbers...

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Not Another Top 10 List

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on January 5, 2012

As we start a fresh new year, there’s no shortage of Top 10 Lists (we’re guilty, too). They can get annoying and repetitive, even for a David Letterman fan. But some are worthy of passing on, even posting on the fridge. Here’s one you should staple to the front...

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Stuck Like Glue

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on September 21, 2011

I was talking with a client last week about portfolio re-balancing and the challenges of volatile markets. I often tell the story of Bob Hager’s shaking hand to illustrate how hard it is to do the right thing when markets are down, but his story is just as good at bringing the...

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To Hedge Or Not To Hedge

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on August 26, 2011

It was announced this week that Vanguard will start in Canada with 6 ETFs. In response to the news, blogger Michael James expressed disappointment that the 2 foreign equity funds would be hedged back into Canadian dollars. I wholeheartedly agree with his view.

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Tom on BNN: Approximately Right

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on August 25, 2011

Tom was on BNN this morning discussing how we think about asset allocation and portfolio positioning in volatile markets. It’s all about being ‘approximately right’ rather than exactly wrong. In other words, you’re never going to pick the top or bottom of...

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What Now? Part II

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on August 10, 2011

What are the stock market declines telling us (other than we’re temporarily poorer)? Are they signaling the end of the world as we know it or, as a veteran value manager suggested to me yesterday, are we entering “opportunity-laden times?” In my view...

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Slow Growth, Debt Burdened ... What Now?

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on August 5, 2011

The Grip, which is our tool for expressing our overall portfolio strategy, was a new feature in the June Quarterly Report, but the cautious stance it signaled was not. Since January, we’ve recommended that clients be positioned conservatively and where...

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Canadians Are Cash Rich

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on April 27, 2011

In this space, we’ve talked often about the conundrum cash-rich investors face. If they’ve been out of the market, or are sitting on a high proportion of cash, what do they do? This week there were some comments from Earl (the Pearl) Bederman at Investor...

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All-Canada All-the-Time Part II

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on February 25, 2011

As an addendum to my post last week, I want to revisit the words safe and Canada. An excellent reason for investing in Canada is that it’s a safe(r) way to play the emerging markets, specifically China. Our resource stocks in particular will benefit from...

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My TFSA Strategy

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on February 14, 2011

As for my strategy, I’ve sold some of my non-registered investments and invested the proceeds in my Steadyhand TFSA. I triggered a small capital gain in the process, but the future tax-free growth will more than offset the small tax liability. All of my TFSA...

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U.S. Housing Market Still a Mess, But...

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on February 7, 2011

The manager of our fixed income funds (Connor, Clark & Lunn) prepares a Financial Markets Forecast every year that addresses the outlook for the economy, inflation, monetary policy, market valuations and extreme technical conditions in order to set...

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