TD Health Sciences Fund
While not without its troubles, the health care industry is one of significant growth and opportunity, yet is also a wonderful defensive play in volatile markets. In addition to the growth opportunities created from the rapid development of the emerging markets and the research and development on life saving drugs, there has also been unprecedented dollars spent on life enhancing drugs, as the baby boomers spend countless dollars to try to reclaim their youth. Further, as health care coverage is expanded to include more people, access to drugs and treatments will inevitably increase. The combination of these factors provides solid growth prospects, and good downside protection in volatile markets.
Read MoreTD Income Advantage Portfolio
The TD Income Advantage Fund is essentially a balanced fund that invests in income focused mutual funds offered by TD. It provides exposure to a wide range of income producing funds including the TD Canadian Bond Fund, TD Dividend Income Fund, TD Short Term Bond Fund, TD Mortgage Fund and TD High Yield Bond Fund.
Read MoreDynamic American Value
Manager David Fingold takes a fundamentally driven, bottom up value focused approach to securities selection, buying stocks trading at a significant discount to their intrinsic value and selling when they become fully priced. The portfolio is quite concentrated, typically holding about 30 names and he places large bets on stocks he likes. The top 10 holdings make up more than 42% of the total portfolio.
Read MoreCIBC Monthly Income Fund
Like the name suggests, this Canadian Balanced Fund pays investors a monthly distribution of $0.06 per unit per month. Based on the December 19 price of $12.55 per unit, this works out to an annual distribution yield of approximately 5.8%. While this yield certainly looks attractive, one has to wonder how sustainable it is going forward, given the low interest rate environment and the dividend yield on stocks within the portfolio.
Read MoreCI Harbour Fund
Despite struggling in 2010, the CI Harbour Fund, managed since its launch by Gerry Coleman and Stephen Jenkins is back. In 2010, the fund lagged the S&P/TSX Composite by a significant margin, as the higher beta, more cyclically driven names drove the index higher. Given the managers’ somewhat more conservative, value focused approach, this underperformance, while disappointing to investors, was not unexpected.
Read MoreRBC Balanced Fund
This is a Canadian Neutral Balanced Fund that is managed by the RBC Investment Policy Committee. There is a lot of talent on the committee including such respected managers as Stu Kedwell, Doug Raymond and Suzanne Gaynor. Unfortunately, the performance of the fund has not lived up to the talent involved in managing it. Although in fairness, that may have as much to do with the size of the fund and the fund as it does the team involved. At $7.4 Billion in assets, the fund holds 375 stocks and 175 bonds.
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