Opinions
Larry Berman CFA, CMT, CTA A Comment -- General Comments From an Expert A Commentary N/A Mar 13, 2017
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She doesn't find the numbers as strong as posted once you start reading through them. There are conflicting job reports. Yesterday's ADP number showed job losses. Today's report beat expectations, but expectations have come down. Looking on a YTD basis, the number of new jobs created is about half what it was for the same time period in 2023.
Details of today's report are not very optimistic. Outside of healthcare, not many industries are hiring. A lot of the jobs are government, whether municipal or state. Government jobs are the least productive in terms of economic productivity.
Her firm is being a bit more careful, positioning conservatively. This past quarter has seen exceptional market growth. But when it comes to the underlying economic data, that's been mixed or weak. When it comes to the disconnect between the market and the economy, it seems to have widened. Then you add in more uncertainty with geopolitical tensions and tariffs.
There are a lot of things to look out for, yet the market keeps making record highs. They see that, and they're a little bit concerned.
There are a lot of reasons why, and she doesn't have the one answer. Perhaps bad economic news makes investors think there's going to be a rate cut. After today's US job numbers, a rate cut likely won't happen this summer. We haven't really had a real recession since 2008-2009. Investors have gotten used to the idea that whenever there's any economic weakness, either central banks or governments will swoop in to save the day.
But with debt levels continuing to rise, there's a limit to how much governments can spend to support the economy. There are signs that the economy is slowing, so it's better to be cautious. Given risks in the market and current valuations, unlikely that markets will continue to post record highs in the second half of this year.
TFSA -- better to DRIP, or to take the cash and buy other dividend stocks?(A Commentary)
Jul 03, 2025What she does for clients is to take the dividend in cash. The DRIP is not a bad thing for accumulating stocks, but her firm likes to have a bit more control. Dividends come in, and they get to choose where to deploy them. This way gives you more flexibility.
For example, she owns AEM which has done very, very well. Instead of "dripping" in more shares at the elevated level, she'd rather put the dividends to work in something that's underperformed, is at a lower valuation, or has a higher yield.
Since she's a little nervous about the markets, she's taking dividends and putting them into money market funds as she waits for a market pullback.
It's remarkable. If you asked someone 3 months ago whether trade wars and unexpected conflict in the Middle East would trigger all-time highs, they wouldn't have expected so. Trying to figure out where markets are going to go is tough.
It's almost as though people were expecting chaos but didn't get the worst-case scenario, and that's being interpreted as reason for optimism. So there's been a sigh of relief.
He and his team are contrarian investors. They try to look at areas that are at least a little bit out of favour. Things that are hitting all-time highs are not usually what excites them. Small caps have had a good rally in the last quarter, but not at the 52-week highs the way large caps are.
Canadian REITs are still really out of favour, so that's an interesting area. People have been obsessed with interest rates and how that affects real estate; but rates don't impact every sub-sector the same way. REITs tend to trade right near their NAV, except in occasional dislocations such as the GFC or Covid. But we're going on 2 years that Canadian REITs have traded at a big discount to NAV, which hasn't happened in the last 25 years. The property market is a lot more buoyant than the REIT market, so that's a great opportunity for investors to take advantage of 2 different ways to own the same asset.
When GICs were yielding 5%, you didn't need the volatility of REITs. As rates have come down, the attractiveness of REITs has gone up. Good place to get yield. Often trading at discount to NAV, so you can probably get some capital gains too. Relatively safe way to be invested in stocks.
No, not as much as a lot of people think they are. Canada's in a tough spot economically. Seems that rate cuts are more likely than rate increases, which would probably help the REIT sector. The sector can definitely do well without rate cuts.
REITs are bond-like, but people forget that at least some REITs have the ability to raise rents over time. They can grow cashflow, which offsets the pressure from interest rates. An office REIT with 20% vacancy would find it tough, but an apartment REIT in Calgary with 1-3% vacancy would be fine.
Not all small caps are startup biotech or drone companies. Lots of businesses dominate a niche that you never even knew was a business. Usually in the range of $500M to $5B market cap.
For example he owns Latham Group, North America's largest manufacturer of fibreglass swimming pools. Its market cap is just under $1B. Fibreglass pools are cheaper up front, last longer, cheaper to maintain; keeps taking market share from concrete, now up to 25% of total pools. This company is 5x bigger than the next largest competitor, with 50% of the fibreglass market.
The sector probably trades at a 20% discount to NAV on average. Fundamentals for real estate in Canada are great. Most of our population lives in cities with some kind of land constraint -- border, mountain, water. Land constraints tend to push up rents over time. We also have better population growth than almost any developed country, creating good demand. And Canada's a safe country.
Buying into a REIT at 20% off is a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to buy you a building at full price.
Investing 101: Companies That Don’t Need Money are The Best Investments
This goes a bit in tandem with the first point. If a company doesn’t need money, and its growth is fully funded internally, you are not likely to get a phone call about it. The best companies simply go about their business, year after year, and compound capital. Without needing new equity, shareholders are not diluted. All growth accrues to the existing owners.
These companies can be harder to find. They may not trade much. They may not pay dividends. They may not make the news for 10 years, after which their strong investment performance might finally get noticed. But they are out there. Before buying any stock, an investor should look at how the share count has grown (or not) over the past 10 years. We certainly try to avoid companies that consider their stock like an ATM and issue shares too often.
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Interest rates. The Fed will raise interest rates this week. Friday’s payroll was pretty decent, so there is no room for them not to go. Three rate hikes are pretty much priced in to the Fed Fund’s curve out to the end of the year. If we go into Europe and European elections, Netherlands actually starts this week, but we are really looking at the French election as the key one, April 23-May 7. If Marie Le Pen wins the election, that is going to be very destabilizing globally, far more than BREXIT, far more than the US election, and far more than the Italian election. We haven’t seen any impact from British breaking trade agreements with the EU, other than the weakening of the British pound. If France decides to leave the EU, and it goes back to the French franc, the whole European project begins to come apart. BREXIT was a warning shot across the bow, and this would be breaking it apart. If it is not this one, maybe it is the Italian election, sometime within the next year. If one of these goes extreme right wing it is going to start falling apart. That is what he is really worried about. The US economy, for all its ills, is still the strongest economy in the world. The restructuring that Trump is trying to put into place should be very, very good in the long run. There is lots of execution risk. We are now hearing Congress may not go for these trade deals, it has to be revenue neutral for tax cuts, etc., thus execution risk for the next couple of quarters We just have to be cautious on the markets.