CEO & Portfolio manager at JC Clark Investments Ltd.
Member since: Feb '08 · 1413 Opinions
Correct, as we've seen such an extended rally. Valuations are very high, especially in US stocks. People seem to be ignoring potential risks such as tariffs, and rhetoric has accelerated in the last week or so. If you look from January 1 to today, you have more geopolitical risk, earnings estimates coming down, US market continuing to rally. He's a little more positive on Canada.
Investors are being complacent right now, and it's time to be a little bit cautious.
The bond market's really telling us it's concerned about inflation, the US deficit, and tariffs potentially being inflationary. With today's additional tariff rhetoric we've seen bond yields moving up. That's a clear sign that the bond market has one view, and people often find that the bond market is a better gauge than the equity market of what's going on from a macro standpoint.
Equity market's being driven by momentum, retail investors, a lot of hype around AI. AI will definitely be important, but we don't know how profitable companies are going to be from this massive capex investment. A lot of positive news is already built in, and the market's focusing on that and pushing all the negatives aside.
He doesn't typically tend to have a ton of commodities exposure. He owns a bit of gold and a bit of energy, but overall his firm is not a heavy commodity investor. It is the time for defensive businesses with good cashflow generation, and value investing should have a bit of a comeback. He favours Canada over the US right now for equities.
When you buy GOOG, you get Waymo for free. Waymo is actually ahead of where TSLA is on robotaxis. 17-18x forward PE. The only Mag 7 he owns. By far the cheapest. Concerns about AI engines taking away its core Search business, but no evidence of that yet. Investing heavily in R&D to protect its assets. One of the world's great business models.
Good business. Packaged food and juice. Success in US growing through acquisition. Pressure from input commodity costs. Things seem to have stabilized from Covid margin pressures. Strong balance sheet. Not overly liquid. Fairly reasonable valuation. On his radar; if it pulled back, might take a position.
Steady business. Purely domestic in Canada. Well run. Growing steadily organically and through acquisition. Biggest in Canada, but only 4-5% market share so lots of room to grow. Scale gives them synergies in tech and in purchasing equipment and supplies. Undemanding multiple at 9x EBITDA, big discount to US names. Could be acquisition target at some point.