Sell in May and go away?

Wouldn’t it be just so easy if it were true?  Well, if you believe the academic research, this odd anomaly does seem to hold up historically.  There are a number of supposed stock market anomalies based on seasonality – The January Effect, the Monday effect, the Holiday Effect, the End of the Month Effect.  These […]

Canada comeback?

“Not to fear, we have found a manager based in our very own Canada that is able to consistently beat the pack” S&P has done a brilliant job over the last few years of shining the light on the fund management industry by publishing it’s SPIVA Scorecards which report on the performance of actively managed mutual funds […]

Are value stocks finally poised to outperform?

Index investing means taking an automated or rules-based approach to constructing and managing a portfolio compared to active investing which relies on a portfolio manager’s judgement to manage the portfolio.  There are many ways to implement an index approach.  Most index funds follow a commercially published index like the S&P/TSX 60 in Canada or the S&P500 in the US.  The […]

Where’s the yield?

Or as Lisa Abramowica and Rani Molla put it in their April 5 Bloomberg Gadfly piece, “Dude, Where’s My Yield?” The picture tells the story – 10 year government bond yields are lower than 2% in many developed countries that have half-decent sovereign credit ratings.  Japan and Switzerland’s 10-year bonds have negative yield!  To search for […]

Year of Enlightenment

It’s hard to feel good looking at media commentary on the performance of stocks in 2015 and 2016 – here’s a sample: Canada’s year of ‘serial disappointments’ leave investors reeling – Financial Post 5 reasons why the market meltdown matters to all Canadians – Global News Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists […]

Volatility got you spooked? Emboldened? Want to scream? It’s dress rehearsal time.

We believe in an evidence-based, disciplined approach to investing.  Once an investment plan is established and courses of action predetermined, market volatility like that which we’ve been experiencing lately won’t phase you at all.  Right?  Wrong.  Having a plan in place doesn’t mean you feel any differently during market swings, but it just might stop you […]

Evidence-Based Investing: Part Four: Asset Allocation Should Be Based On Risk Tolerance And Disciplined Rebalancing

The core principle of an evidence-based approach is that risk and return are related. The remaining principles of the evidence based approach flow from this core principle. In the third installment of our series on Evidence-Based Investing we presented some of the evidence which demonstrates that investors should diversify their investment holdings.  In this fourth installment we focus […]