Monthly Commentaries

Facts without interpretation are useless. For example, it is a fact that the S&P 500 Index was the top-performing market in the world for the five-year period ending November 2024. Or was it? After removing the biggest seven stocks (aka the “Magnificent Seven”) from the index return, the remaining 493 businesses provided investors a return […]

This past weekend, a close friend asked my opinion whether the re-election of Donald Trump posed a “buy or sell” market opportunity. Truthfully, I responded, it’s just not that simple. Trump’s re-election marks a political comeback, reflecting voter focus on economic issues like immigration, manufacturing, and inflation. His decisive win likely emboldens his policy stance, […]

This year, the concept of “risk” has sparked significant debate in the industry. At Laurus, we define risk as the permanent loss of capital. However, perspectives on risk vary widely. Some associate it with volatility, as seen in the current year’s market fluctuations. Others see risk in terms of liquidity, concentration (e.g., the dominance of […]

It has been a very interesting year thus far in the equity markets. To mid-year, only eight stocks made up the year-to-date return of the S&P 500 Index, seven of which are leveraged to artificial intelligence (“AI”). Canadian and European indices have been more balanced but have significantly underperformed the US market given their lower […]

On Sunday, October 18, 1987, I was enjoying a late birthday celebration with my family. The next day, our investment team huddled around various transistor radios (back then, computers were used only for Lotus 123), as the stock market suffered its worst day ever. Our young team had successfully shepherded nervous clients through the previous […]

Over the past year, equity markets have rebounded from the price weakness experienced in 2022. The market correction that commenced in November 2021 led to significant declines in equity markets over the subsequent year. The US S&P 500 fell by -12.2%, while the Canadian TSX Composite experienced a more modest decline of -5.8%, buoyed by […]

“Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.” – from “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles The Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s favorite formula relates to luck and skill: “My favorite formula was about success, and I wrote success equals talent plus luck and great success equals talent plus a lot of luck.” The […]

“We are bamboozled by biases, fooled by fallacies, entrapped by errors, hoodwinked by heuristics, deluded by illusions.” – Koen Smets, poet We humans are shockingly prone to bad ideas, ideas that grow into terrible decisions, and then metastasize into actions that undermine, damage, or might even end our lives. We’d all like to think that […]

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.” – John Ruskin Think about your last big purchase. Whether a house, or car, or boat, or television – your evaluation a successful purchase was likely based on the highest quality item for the best price you could negotiate. However, turned around, […]

“If you’re not aware that you’re not supposed to be able do something, the barriers to doing it are dramatically lessened.” – Sam Zell Over the past decade, there has been an increasing demand for private equity fund investment as investors have looked to diversify their portfolios and seek higher risk-adjusted returns. The demand has […]

““Over the course of an investing life, stuff is going to happen—both good and bad—that no one saw coming. Instead of playing the guessing game, focus on the opportunities in front of you.” – Chris Mayer In the investment business, by far the best path to creating wealth – wealth being defined as assets/capital that […]

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.” ” – Immanuel Kant Over more than a decade (2008-2019), baseball’s Major League home-plate umpires made every pitch call correctly on one team roughly twice per season. Among the 114 umpires with at least 5,000 called pitches during that time, the range […]