Investment Strategy - February 2025

Lost in all the tariff talk is a potential seismic shift in AI power dynamics. China’s DeepSeek produced an OpenAI competitor, DeepSeek-R1, at a fraction of the price......

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Outlook for 2025: Analysts are cautiously optimistic

While he wasn’t invited, Donald Trump still made his presence felt at the Outlook for 2025 conference held in Old Montreal before an audience of one hundred BMO customers......

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Global Markets Commentary: Off to a good start – until it wasn’t

January’s positive start to the year is now in jeopardy after the U.S. launched a trade war. Tariffs on China are going ahead, but Canada and Mexico have been given a temporary reprieve. The level of uncertainty remains elevated and headlines......

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Proposed capital gains inclusion rate changes – Implementation deferred until 2026

As outlined in our recent publication, Federal Government Prorogues Parliament – Tax Implications, the prorogation of Federal Parliament on January 6, 2025 brought to an end all proceedings before Parliament.  This includes the draft legislative......

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Trade war impact: First pass

On February 1, U.S. President Trump signed an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on all non-energy imports from Canada and a 10% tariff on energy imports (effective February 4). In separate executive orders, a 25% tariff was levied on all imports...

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Weekly Strategy Perspectives: Adjusting to the new (old) normal

The Through Line: For much of 2024, stock and bond prices rose as investors reacted to solid economic progress and the prospect of central banks launching rate-cutting campaigns....

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How to use life insurance to keep your business growing

Entrepreneurship is supposed to be a thrilling experience filled with hope, opportunity and, of course, hard, painstaking work. The last thing anyone wants to think about is what might happen to a budding business if a founder or critical employee......

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Investment Strategy - January 2025

After a fantastic year, market still well supported…but keep a close eye on tariffs and the unemployment rate...

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Global Markets Commentary 2024 in Review: The Year of the Electorate

For investors, 2024 was a stellar year despite fears that politics and geopolitics would wreak havoc on the markets. What better proof that politics don’t belong in your portfolio....

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Retirement Planning Calculator Tool

This Retirement calculator will allow you to input assumptions to generate a retirement illustration and a tool for estimating income in retirement.  This self-input calculator tool will provide a good high level summary while we would develop a more comprehensive tax optimized plan for our clients using our access to a more detailed and sophisticated planning software when we meet.  Enjoy!

https://www.bmo.com/financial-calculators/retirement-savings/

 

Portfolio

To Preserve & Protect Your Legacy

Managing the Health of Your Wealth by Building Smarter Portfolios

 

We believe the greatest opportunity for clients to achieve their investment objectives and to realize optimal risk-adjusted returns is by using a well-constructed portfolio combining active, passive and alternative strategies allocated to meet their unique needs. Given all of these factors, we believe portfolio construction efforts should focus on seeking a balance between growth potential and downside protection. This means being sensitive to stock valuations, ensuring wide-ranging diversification and focusing on income.
 



In its broadest sense, diversification means exposure to a variety of asset classes that have historically had lower correlations to each other.  For many investors, this could mean adding real estate, international exposure and alternative strategies (such as long-short, absolute return, and market neutral mandates) to their portfolios.

Our Portfolio construct provides adequate and prudent diversification to global equity markets and fixed income, while incorporating an allocation to Absolute Return managers. 

Please contact us to learn more about our portfolio construct and historical performance.
 

Why Select a CFA

Why Choose a CFA?

The Case for Passive VS Active US Equity

Historically, the US equity market as represented by the S&P 500 Index, has been extremely difficult to beat!  In the past 15 years, less than 3% of Active Managers have been able to Outperform the Index. 

The S&P 500 is highly efficient, liquid, and does not suffer from high single security concentration risk (ie. like the TSX Index has in Canada in the past with Nortel, RIM, Valeant, and Shopify today). 

Please click here to see the latest SPIVA research on how difficult it is to outperform the S&P 500 US equity index.  This is why our core strategy for US equity market exposure is a Passive US Equity allocation incorporating low cost Index ETFs.

Benefits of Alternatives

With markets at all-time highs, volatility at multi-year lows, high equity market valuations and general political and economic uncertainty, investors have a desire to protect capital and earn a competitive return. Absolute Return Strategies are often utilized by High Net Worth families to Enhance Returns & Add Downside Protection to complement Traditional Portfolio Asset Exposures.

Click here to discover the Power & Benefits of Adding Alternatives to your Portfolio!