DM Monthly Report
What is Risk? – Despite its central importance to portfolio management, there isn’t really a universal definition of investment risk. When we launched Dixon Mitchell, we decided that our best chance of getting the risk question right was to put ourselves in the shoes of our clients and make sure that our decision making process was mindful of the following two common concerns:
Click here to read more: DM-Monthly-Report-Dec-15
December Monthly Insight
Big Bad Bear Market – If stock markets around the world had fallen by more than 50% from their peak, investors would have been in quite a tizzy with the panic of collapse and catastrophe running rampant. But it is not stocks that are in a nasty bear market, it is commodities. They are far less important from an investment perspective in many parts of the world, 9.7% in the U.S. and 11.6% internationally based upon their stock market weighting.
Click here to read more: Monthly Insight – December 2015 – Big Bad Bear Market
November Update
The Markets welcome a New Liberal Canada – Canadians woke up on October 20th to a Liberal majority government after a decade of Conservative minority and majority governments. Leaving ideology and partisanship aside, Cardinal must consider what impact this might have on the investing environment and on our companies in particular.
For individual investors, decisions about TFSAs and pensions will have some impact, but for the overall economy, the election results lave us generally optimistic.
Click here to read more: Cardinal Update – November 2015
Changes to the Taxation of Estates
Estate, trust and tax planners have long favoured testamentary trusts as vehicles to pass along assets to beneficiaries or heirs. A testamentary trust is generally a trust or estate that is created the day a person dies. Commonly, these trusts are established in a testator’s will.
A significant benefit to testamentary trusts had been that income earned and retained in the trust received the same graduated rate of income tax as an individual tax payer. Unfortunately, under the terms of Bill C-43, after January 1, 2016, all income retained in the trust will now be taxed at the highest rate of tax applicable in the province in which the trust is resident.
There will be two exceptions to this new rule – The Graduated Rate Estate (GRE) and a Qualified Disability Trust (QDT). Read more 
