Tony's Viewpoint
Fear in the market
Investors who have taken the summer off may feel that the Toronto market has been directionless as it has traded between 11500and 11920 for the month of August which is roughly the range it was trading in early June. Of course, for those who have closely followed the market, it seems to be moving in [...]
Read MoreMid-Summer Night’s Dream?
Investors have never been more confused than they were in the last couple of months. The volatility in equity markets was at an extreme as the euro fell 15%, the price of copper fell 20%, interest rates on 10 year US government bonds went from 4% to 2.9%–one of the single biggest rallies in the [...]
Read MoreThe Recovery Looks Non-Linear
There are already early signs that point to the non-linear nature of the current recovery in both Canada and the US. Following a very strong six months of recovery, recent economic indicators are starting to show a notable softening in activity. This is consistent with the concensus view that overall US growth in the second half of [...]
Read MoreChina Abandons the peg to the US dollar
China’s announcement on June 19th that it will abandon its currency peg to the US dollar and henceforth manage the renminibi more flexibly against a basket of currencies will have implications for the world economy, but most of all it will have implications for China.
What impact should we expect if Beijing allows the renminbi to [...]
Future Investment Opportunities
Over the next decade or so, one can expect to see more muted growth in the developed world, but stronger growth in the developing world as they transition to consumer based economies. The developed world will witness a consumer who is rebuilding their balance sheet(in essence, cutting their consumption and increasing savings), while at the same [...]
Read MoreInvestment Outlook and Risks
We now live in an era where navigating the capital markets has become more difficult. Traditionally, the business cycle was the primary driver in the development of a portfolio strategy. The classic business cycle would go something like this: the economy would come out of a recession and enter into early expansion which would evolve [...]
Read MoreAnother Recession for the US?
The recent sell off in the US stock market has raised a lot of questions about the risk of another recession in the US.
While perma bear economists talk a lot about the possibility of a “double dip” in the economy, it is extremely rare for an economy to slip back into recession once the recovery [...]
What I Have Learnt
Learning offers a lifetime of pleasure for me and I have certainly learnt many important lessons as a financial advisor over the past 23 years. Let me focus on a very obvious but important lesson:Â Â Â Everybody is right sometimes, but nobody is right all of the time.
Advisors and investors alike are bombarded with information everyday from [...]
What caused the “flash crash” of May 6th 2010?
It took just 20 minutes on May 6th for the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plunge by nearly 1000 points. It was the largest intra-day decline in the market’s history. The search is still on for a specific trigger that caused this event. Initial rumours, among them that a trader had typed a sell order [...]
Read MoreQ: Is the US economy on the mend?
Real Gross Domestic Product in the US rose about 2% in the second half of 2009, retracing about half of the drop that occurred during the downturn. The temporary effects of fiscal stimulus certainly played a role in stabilizing the economy, but recent increases in core measures of retail sales and capital spending indicate that [...]
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