Commentary
Archive of our newsletters.
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2025 Q4 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward Most every major asset class rose in 2025 – a surprise to many given some of the unsettling events that have occurred over the past year. Major global equity markets posted double-digit gains. Major fixed income categories turned in comparatively modest (but positive) returns. Nothing, however, matched the unprecedented rise
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2025 Q3 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward Across the globe, it was a solid Q3 for equities. While the U.S. continues to lag other major markets on a year-to-date basis, it saw a revival in Q3 on the prospect of Fed rate cuts in the context of a still-acceptable, albeit weakening, U.S. economy. The main driver of
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2025 Q2 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward If you had spent the last three months on a desert island and returned at the end of Q2, you would have thought nothing much had happened since you left. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as markets were extremely volatile in Q2. After a precipitous fall
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2025 Q1 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward We thought it best to delay our quarterly newsletter by a couple weeks to see how events might unfold post the April 2 U.S. tariff announcement. We’re glad we did. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster since, but things have become slightly more clear in recent days (slightly being
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2024 Q4 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward With central banks around the world initiating rate-cutting cycles in 2024, it’s difficult to find a stock market that didn’t produce double-digit returns on the year. Despite this rate-cutting, North American bond markets were flat to slightly down on a price basis, but of course bonds now pay substantially more
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2024 Q3 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward Q3 saw a rising tide lift (almost) all boats. As interest rates moved lower, bond prices rose. Major equity markets across the globe moved higher, with many finishing the quarter at or near peak levels. Money market rates of return were one of the few things that fell in the
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2024 Q2 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward The first half of 2024 is firmly in the books. Investment-grade bonds on both sides of the border are down year-to-date by about 2% on a price basis, though it’s notable that today they are paying a respectable level of interest and hold the potential for material capital gains once
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2024 Q1 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward Q1 was stellar for equites. The S&P/TSX Composite Index, for example, was up 6.6% in Q1, while the S&P 500 was up an even better 10.6% – moves that would be fine for a full year, let alone a single quarter. However, results were not so stellar for bonds in
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2023 Q4 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Forward Glass half full or glass half empty? Glass half full = despite a large, rapid increase in interest rates, rampant inflation, wars in Europe and the Middle East and everything else, the market indices aren’t much off where they were two years ago. Glass half empty = we’ve made essentially
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2023 Q3 Newsletter
Looking Back and Looking Ahead In Q3, the market narrative quickly shifted away from the hype around AI, and its levitating effect on “the Magnificent Seven” U.S. mega-cap stocks, to an intense focus on rising government bond yields, not just in the U.S. but across the developed world. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields touched 4.79% this
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2023 Q2 Newsletter
The Rear View and the Front View The first half of 2023 is squarely in the books. On a price basis, year-to-date results have varied considerably across capital markets. In the U.S., for example, the S&P 500 was up 16% in H1, the Dow was up 4% in H1, and the NASDAQ Composite was up
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2023 Q1 Newsletter
The Rear View and the Front View The first quarter of 2023 can be summarized in one word: VOLATILITY. Enthusiasm about China’s post-COVID re-opening, together with largely defensive investor positioning entering the new year, drove a strong January for equity markets. February brought a spate of hotter-than-expected inflation and employment data, stoking renewed fears of
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2022 Q4 Newsletter
2022 Q4 Newsletter The Rear View and The Front View Happy new year, and good riddance to 2022! Yes, the past year saw the “everything bubble” finally burst. In the decade-plus prior to 2022, the combination of ultra-low manipulated rates by central banks and massive deficit spending by governments drove bubbles in multiple asset classes
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2022 Q3 Newsletter
2022 Q3 Newsletter The Rear View and the Front View After an abysmal first half of 2022, both bonds and stock suffered further in Q3. In Q3, Canadian and U.S. investment-grade bond markets posted returns of -0.4% and -5.3%, respectively, while Canadian and U.S. stock markets posted returns of -2.2% and -5.3%, respectively. The table
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2022 Q2 Newsletter
2022 Q2 Newsletter The Rear View and the Front View Turn out the lights, the party’s over. At least for now. After a pretty lousy first quarter, bond and stock markets fared poorly again in Q2. The table below shows performance for various asset classes in the first half of 2022: We recently read that
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2022 Q1 Newsletter
2022 Q1 Newsletter The Rear View and the Front View The best performing asset class in Q1 was cash, that is unless you’re the rare investor whose only holding was the Canadian equity index, which was up on the quarter. Bond and stock markets mostly fell in Q1, as the historically inverse relationship between stocks
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2021 Q4 Newsletter
2021 Q4 Newsletter Blank The Rear View and the Front View 2021 saw very strong equity markets, while bond markets were somewhat weak. In Canada, the S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 21.7% while the Canadian bond market1 fell 5.2%. In the U.S., the S&P 500 posted a 26.9% gain, while the U.S. investment grade bond market2
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2021 Q3 Newsletter
Welcome We welcome you to our inaugural quarterly newsletter. Its purpose is to provide us the opportunity to reflect upon both what has transpired in the past quarter (and/or year to date) and discuss our view as we go forward. While the newsletter is a work in progress and may later undergo changes in structure,