Value mutual fund managers Sionna Investment Managers says the old rule of thumb that an ounce of gold should buy a good man's suit suggests gold is currently overvalued by about 50%.
As keen students of financial history, we have spent time over the years trying to gain a better understanding of what drives markets over longer periods of time and have identified several fundamental factors that tend to result in market outperformance.
Canada is now one of the most expensive developed stock markets in the world, lagging only Denmark and Hong Kong, warns award-winning value mutual fund manager Kim Shannon.
On April 25, 2011 the world’s largest gold producer, Barrick Gold (market value $44B), announced their intention to buy the copper producer Equinox Minerals for $7.3B.
Canada has long been associated with commodities, and our stock market is no different. Half of the value of the S&P/TSX Composite Index is derived from cyclical stocks in the resource sectors, energy and materials.
When measured by market capitalization, resources companies now make up slightly more than half of Canada's equity market, and to a large degree have overshadowed other sectors. In this week's Canadian equities roundtable, we asked our panel of value managers to look beyond the rocks, trees and oilfields for attractively priced non-resources stocks. The panelists were, Kim Shannon, president and CEO of Toronto-based Sionna Investment Managers Inc, Mark Thomson, managing director and head of research at the value manager Beutel Goodman & Co. Ltd. and Ian Hardacre, vice-president and head of Canadian equities at Invesco Trimark Ltd. They spoke with Morningstar columnist Sonita Horvitch, whose three-part series continues on Wednesday and Thursday.
Correlations between most equity sectors and individual stocks are all well above historical norms. In the short term, this is reducing the benefits that have typically come from individual stock selection and causing returns for all investors to be connected.
"How I would invest a $100,000 windfall: I love giving 500-year-old investment advice from a German banker called Jacob Fugger the Rich: Keep one-quarter each in stocks, bonds, real estate and gold coins. Gold coins were the currency of his day. In modern-day terms, he's talking about T-bills. What he's telling you is to dynamically rebalance-sell asset-mix winners and buy asset-mix losers. All sorts of studies show the more you dynamically rebalance, the better your long-term returns. It sounds easy, but it's incredibly difficult to do."
Always a huge presence in the Canadian equity market, the major banks have been instrumental in the robust recovery from last year's bear-market bottom. Since March 2009 the financial services sector, dominated by the banks, has roughly doubled in value to lead all others. Weighing in on the future prospects for the banks, in today's part one of Morningstar's Canadian equity roundtable, are Kim Shannon president and chief investment officer of Sionna Investment Management Inc.; Martin Hubbes, chief investment officer at AGF Investments Inc.; and Ian Hardacre, vice-president at Invesco Trimark Ltd. They spoke with Morningstar columnist Sonita Horvitch, whose three-part series continues on Wednesday and concludes on Friday.
In today's part two of Morningstar's Canadian equity roundtable, the portfolio managers discuss life insurers, energy producers and gold miners. Our three panelists: Kim Shannon, president and chief investment officer of Sionna Investment Management Inc.; Martin Hubbes, chief investment officer at AGF Investments Inc.; and Ian Hardacre, vice-president at Invesco Trimark Ltd.