Investments

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Market Insights

Academics push for SRI research

Canada is facing an academic research deficit on responsible investment. However, there are new opportunities on the horizon, including a major international conference and the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation’s Responsible Investment Initiative. The project has already released its first paper, Responsible Property Investing and Property Management: Exploring the Impacts of Good Labour Practices on […]

By Doug Watt |June 16, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

SRI lessons from the credit crisis

A new report concludes that while socially responsible investors are ahead of the mainstream on many issues, such as transparency, corporate governance and predatory lending, they did not foresee the global credit crisis any better than the mainstream financial community. The report, The Financial Crisis: An Environmental, Social and Governance Perspective, was commissioned by the […]

By Doug Watt |June 16, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

Trading across multiple markets

Not so long ago, only a decade, retail investors were wringing their hands about outages on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which sometimes failed to provide high-speed access for day-trading in Nortel stock. They envied the U.S., with its multiple exchanges, including electronic communications networks (ECNs) that provided trading in Nasdaq stocks. Ironically, the Nasdaq stocks […]

By Scot Blythe |June 3, 2009

5 min read

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Market Insights

Are we there yet?

Over the past several weeks, much has changed in the tone of the financial press, the economic indicators and the markets. Virtually all of the changes have been positive. The tone has changed from utter doom and gloom to something much more cheerful and, I might add, more balanced. Many economic indicators have become more […]

By Peter Drake |June 3, 2009

5 min read

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Diversification is over-rated

If diversification is the only “free lunch” investors have, then what is over-diversifi cation? A sub-par meal at an expensive restaurant? Our industry has gone way too far with the diversifi cation mantra. We have run steadily and without constraint to a point where clients today own hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of stocks […]

By Tom Bradley |June 1, 2009

3 min read

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Market Insights

Transforming, not eliminating, risk

One of the great lessons of the current credit crisis is that risk is indestructible. When capital is invested in a long-term asset, risk exists, since the asset will provide value to its owner over a long period, while involving non-trivial acquisition costs. Investment in long-term assets necessarily involves forecasting, and the vagaries of forecasting […]

By James I. Hymas |June 1, 2009

7 min read

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Market Insights

Equities vs. bonds

As the last vestiges of a rather cold winter come to an end, I wonder if the chilling price drops in equity markets may at long last be ready for recovery. At the end of February 2009, the S&P 500 index was 50% below where it was in March 2000. Since then, March came in […]

By John Nicola |June 1, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

The impact of fees on portfolios

If you held the fixed-income fund that had the worst performance in Canada over the last year, you’d likely be disappointed by its 3.4% loss. But you’d certainly be more upset if you held Canada’s worst performing high-yield bond fund (which lost 34.7%) or Canadian equity fund (down 45.4%). With these returns in mind, it […]

By Esko Mickels |June 1, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

The worst is over… for now: Bear market historian

If the experience of the last four great bear markets is any indication, the economy and stock market have likely turned a corner, says author and bear market historian Russell Napier. However, we may still be five years away from reaching the absolute bottom of this market cycle. In 2005, Napier, a global macroeconomic strategist […]

By Mark Noble |May 19, 2009

5 min read

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Market Insights

Can leading economic indicators lead us out of the recession?

In one way or another, economic indicators provide some insight into the future direction of the economy. The experience of past economic downturns tells us that this interest is, in and of itself, a sign that some progress has been made at moving through the economic downturn and that we’re getting closer to better and […]

By Peter Drake |May 12, 2009

6 min read

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