Red Sky Canadian Equity Corporate Class
With a year to date loss of 3.6% (at November 30), this fund has lagged the 11% rise in the S&P/TSX Composite by a considerable margin. What a difference a year makes, as last year, it gained more than 27% and was one of the stronger Canadian focused equity funds out there. Things started to go bad for this fund in September and it never really regained its footing. Much of that can be...
Read MoreDynamic Real Return Bond Fund
When I first saw that this fund had lost 2.29% to the end of November, I honestly thought it was an error. I was surprised for a number of reasons. First, real return bonds tend often have very long time horizons, and at times trade much like a traditional long bond. Therefore, with yields dropping, one would expect a positive return. Second, the real return bond index was up more than 14% so...
Read MoreNational Bank Long Term Bond Fund
With bond yields moving substantially lower this year, it is not surprising to see that long term bonds outperform. At the end of November, the FTSE TMX Long Term Bond Index had gained more than 17%. That is why it is not really a shocker to see this National Bank offering as the top performing bond fund. It invests in a portfolio of bonds issued by Canadian governments and corporations that...
Read MoreDynamic Power Global Growth Class
The overwhelming majority of the time, I focus on funds that do a great job at managing volatility and protecting capital. This fund is definitely an exception to that, with a standard deviation that is nearly double the MSCI World Index, a beta that is well north of 1, and upside and downside capture ratios that will leave you shaking your head. Managed by Noah Blackstein, this is a...
Read MoreMackenzie Ivy Foreign Equity Fund
I have long said that this is the global equity fund you want to own when markets get volatile, and that point was driven home by recent market activity. Between September 1 and October 16, the MSCI World Index dropped by nearly 6% in Canadian dollar terms. During the same period, the Ivy Foreign Equity Fund dropped a little more than 3%, or roughly 56% of the downside movement of the market....
Read MoreTrimark Canadian Small Companies Fund
Invesco recently announced that this fund would be closed to new investors effective October 8. It is a “soft cap”, meaning that those investors who already held the fund could add to their holdings. While it is unfortunate that one of the best small cap funds in the country is being capped, it really is in the best interest of the current investors for them to do so. The managers run a very...
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