Monthly Commentaries

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 […]

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” – Daniel Kahneman Investors face many challenges over a market cycle. Yes, they need sufficient returns to meet funding or spending obligations, but they also must manage portfolio risk and avoid too much concentration on […]

“Cause when you worry your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down. Don’t worry, be happy.” From a song by Bobby McFerrin There is an old journalism colloquialism, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Never has it been more true in our society than today. As we gradually move away from COVID, the ascendancy […]

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan We all tend toward innumeracy generally, and we’re especially bad […]

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” Mark Twain In truth, I’m not a huge baseball fan. But great lessons can come from anywhere and, as in this case, occasionally from the diamond. In 2013, Mark Appel was drafted as the number one pick by the Houston Astros. In his first 44 innings as a […]

“There is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.” Jesse Livermore Growing macro concerns focused on inflation, rising interest rates leading to a potential economic slowdown, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine […]