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 […]
View Article“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 […]
View ArticleLast year’s letter began with a perspective driven by correcting markets, filled with messages of entrepreneurial concern as rising interest rates slashed investment multiples pushing equity prices into the proverbial sewer. But, like a phoenix from the ashes, the market rises again. Proving our ongoing contention that one can never predict a market direction.
View ArticleAsset allocators use mean-variance models to optimize their portfolios and, in the case of public markets, use asset class proxies as a starting point. For small cap equities these proxies are well-known indices such as the Russell 2000 or the MSCI EAFE or Global Small Cap indices. What we will show in this installment is […]
View Article“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 […]
View ArticleChristopher Page, President and CEO of Laurus Investment Counsel, is looking forward to calmer waters as the global small-cap equity firm continues to rebound from tumultuous market conditions by sticking with its bottom-up, quality-oriented approach. Toronto-based Laurus, which offers Canadian, U.S., global and international small-cap equity strategies as well as a North American all-cap equity […]
View ArticleThe S&P 500 has outperformed most other passive investment indices and active managers. The S&P 500 has held on to its best performers and let their winners run. The biggest winners of the decade, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Google, now make up greater than 20% of the S&P index and drive a […]
View Article“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, […]
View Article“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 […]
View Article““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 […]
View Article“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 […]
View Article“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 […]
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