Europe – a tale of two halves

I was listening to a fund manager discuss the current situation in Europe and he pointed out how different is the reality in Europe from the perceptions held by many people.  The fact is that in the more developed European countries, corporations are often in excellent shape.  While their head office may be based in [...]

How to improve your returns

If you think most people are rational investors, think again. Financial services market research firm DALBAR has surveyed individual households for more than 20 years and created their Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB). This measures the returns of the S&P 500 Index against the returns of the individual investor. Here are two surprising facts: The [...]

What do we know about the current market mood?

As the title of this article indicates, my intention is to distinguish the market mood from several important facts.  The emotions of market participants is subject to change every moment of every day, causing them to change their outlook on the future value of businesses.  If people worry about the future, their appraisal of the [...]

Think before firing that fund manager

Michael Nairne wrote an article in the National Post that provides healthy advice about the consistent tendency of investors to change mutual fund managers at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.  For many years I have emphasized to clients how important it is to make rational, careful selection of fund managers before investing with them, [...]