DM Monthly Report – Nov 2018
VPI CANADIAN BALANCED POOL PASSES 10-YEAR MARK – A little over a decade ago, a financial services firm based in Winnipeg called Value Partners Investments (VPI) hired Dixon Mitchell to manage a soon to be launched balanced mutual fund. Since that time, VPI has flourished to become a significant player in the Canadian fund and advisory space, while DM has added assets, expanded our portfolio management team, and continued to hone our equity and fixed income investment processes. As both firms have grown, so has the size, following and track record of the VPI Canadian Balanced Pool.
At inception, VPI set the asset mix ranges for the fund with fairly wide bands, allowing DM a high degree of management flexibility and the ability to provide unit holders with an investment experience very similar to that of our typical internal client with a balanced asset allocation:
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Cardinal Update – November 2018
PROTECTING AGAINST THE BEAR – Over the past few years, Cardinal has been making a shift to our portfolios to become more defensive and protect against a market decline. There are two types of market declines that we pay close attention to; corrections and bear markets. A correction, typically a decline of around 10%, can occur sporadically every few months or after multiple years. They have been less frequent since the Great Recession of 2008/2009. Corrections typically do not last very long and are not usually a cause for concern. They are often seen as a healthy reset for the market when optimism has been growing faster than underlying market fundamentals. They also give long-term buyers a chance to buy stocks at bargain rates. A bear market, defined as a 20% pull back or more, is usually led by more serious underlying market concerns. A bear market can occur in tandem with a recession, but not always.
Click here to read more: Cardinal Update – November 2018
Cardinal Quarterly – October 2018
MARKET OUTLOOK – The Federal Reserve has signaled strongly that short term interest rates will move higher, probably by at least three more hikes to 3%, and now that NAFTA worries have been put aside, we expect that the Bank of Canada will not be far behind. We expect long-term rates to move higher as well, probably over 3.5% on the U.S. 10 year.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan (one of our holdings) said he is surprised when people can’t believe that interest rates are rising. We share this sentiment. U.S. economic growth has been accelerating, unemployment is at record lows, and higher oil combined with tariffs are starting to push supply chain costs higher. All of these factors put pressure on the Central Banks to raise interest rates.
Click here to read more: Cardinal Quarterly – October 2018
DM Monthly Report – October 2018
‘GOODBYE Q3’ – We bid farewell, not just to the calendar days of the third quarter, but to all of the equity gains accumulated during the period. Concerted selling in the second week of October precipitated a sharp decline in major markets and emphatically broke an extended run of calm that had seen the S&P 500 go 74 straight sessions without a single one closing up or down by more than 1%. Even worse, the plunge came just as envelopes were sealed on our Q3 client reports in which our commentary hailed the market’s steadfast resilience in the face of so many potential selloff catalysts! (ugh) As investors grapple with this dose of downside, a few points worth noting:
Click here to read more: DM-Monthly-Report-Oct-18
