Brandes Emerging Markets
The fourth quarter was a tough one for the fund, amid a precipitous drop in the price of oil, major currency devaluations (especially the Russian Ruble), and political instability in Brazil, Argentina and other EM nations. With its overweight position in both Russia and Brazil, the fund was hit particularly hard, dropping 9.3% in Canadian dollar terms. It was even worse in U.S. dollar terms,...
Read MoreTrimark Global Endeavour Fund
While I have this fund in the Global Small and Mid-Cap Equity category on the Recommended List, it is really much more of an all cap mandate. Managers Jeff Hyrich and Erin Greenfield have built a concentrated portfolio of high quality names, with sustainable competitive advantages that trade at a discount to their estimate of intrinsic value. Their fundamentally driven, bottom up approach has...
Read MoreRBC O’Shaughnessy U.S. Value Fund
If you look at the quarterly performance of this fund compared to the other U.S. equity funds, you might be wondering what happened with it, posting a very modest 2.1% rise, while the others were all significantly higher. Well since you asked, I’ll tell you what happened -currency happened. Over the quarter, the Canadian dollar dropped by nearly 4%. The RBC O’Shaughnessy U.S. Value Fund hedges...
Read MoreIA Clarington Conservative Canadian Equity
For me, the big appeal of this fund is its conservative profile, which has allowed it to post decent returns over the long term, with significantly less downside than the market, and its peers. Historically, it has delivered about 70% of the upside of the market, yet only experienced between half to two thirds of the down-side. This helps to explain why I was so disappointed with its recent...
Read MoreCI Signature High Income Fund
Despite a modest 0.6% gain in the final quarter, the fund still posted a respectable 8.6% rise for 2014. Over the year, the managers had taken profits in many of their energy names, and built up a significant cash reserve. At the end of December, it had about 20% in cash and cash like investments. They have done this for two reasons. The first is to help boost the defensive positioning of the...
Read MoreAGF Monthly High Income Fund
With two thirds of the fund invested in equities, combined with an overweight allocation to energy and materials, it is not hard to see why this was the worst performing balanced fund on our list in the fourth quarter. It lost 5%, while each of the other picks on the list were in positive territory. While the equity sleeve was aggressively positioned with a cyclical bent, the fixed income sleeve...
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