Brian Madden

There may be some evidence of that. It's been an eventful first almost-4 months of the year, and especially since so-called "liberation day". A better name might be liquidation day. People are catching on to the fact that the White House says one thing today and negates it the next, which might make investors less trigger happy. 

Hopefully, there's some longer reflection being made instead of knee-jerk reactions to off-the-cuff remarks. A lot of volatility for sure.

Now it's really a disparate group of stocks. Not at all the way they traded for 2024 and 2023. He favours the ones that have recurring revenue. TSLA was the first to report, and it was a bomb on the quarter. 

GOOG skews more to the service sector side of the economy, which is distanced from tariffs. Very robust business, dominant player in Search advertising. He has no undue concerns about that. DOJ lawsuits are usually more bark than bite. 

Cloud business is growing nicely for all involved in it. 

Great, asset-light business. Dominant player in concerts and ticketing, also gets revenue from ads and sponsorships. De facto monopoly or oligopoly. Growing 8-9%, but not at a pace that justifies the lofty multiple of 44x PE. 

Challenged sector for several years, mainly since interest rates started rising. Bond proxies that are pretty compelling when there's financial repression as we had from 2008-2022. You have to pick your spots. Likes Telus, but not the rest.

Telus dividend is more secure, yielding ~7.5%. Continues its cadence of dividend growth by 3% twice a year. Price war is abating. Selling non-core real estate and monetizing old copper.

Challenged sector for several years, mainly since interest rates started rising. Bond proxies that are pretty compelling when there's financial repression as we had from 2008-2022. You have to pick your spots. Likes Telus, but not the rest.

Pretty much a certainty that BCE will cut its dividend; it's more a question of when and by how much. Yield is now up to 13%; a screaming red flag from the market telling you that dividend is not sustainable. 

Fingers in a lot of stock-exchange pies. Companies pay to keep stocks listed. Fees from trading activity, which has been fast and furious. Options market has been even more frenetic. Also has sticky recurring revenue businesses, which are less cyclical. In his dividend growers mandate. Globally diversified.

Fundamental resilience is near the top of the Mag 7 pack. Sticky, mission-critical services. Fell on generalized market weakness. Continues to grow at compelling mid-high teens pace. Flexing pricing power with subscription renewals. Cloud business still growing, but at a decelerated pace. Own for the long haul.

Semiconductors, broadly, have become like shooting fish in a barrel since ChapGPT made its debut in late 2022. All are pretty cyclical. Likes others better, such as NVDA and AVGO.

Not something his firm is all that predisposed to doing. One of the most dangerous phrases that gets tossed around in investing is "buy low, sell high". A better discipline is to "buy high, sell higher" -- that's the approach in their momentum mandate, and it works very well. Momentum is a force of nature not only in physics, but also in the investing world.

Hyper-cyclical earnings. Storage and memory chips, which are like a commodity and so you have big swings. Consensus is for earnings to grow over 400% this year, not because of innovation but because of the demand cycle. Go back 10 years and this name has generated a total compound return of 10%, which is less than the S&P. Beta is 1.9.

Impressed by last week's quarterly results. Cracking down on password sharing is generating more revenue. Innovating by launching ad-supported versions. Geographic expansion. Aggressive investment in content. Has become a big free cashflow story.

Officially classified as a consumer discretionary stock, but he considers it more akin to a utility. A relatively inexpensive indulgence for the value it offers. Difficult macro headwinds would have minimal impact.

May be able to ramp up M&A a bit. Many died before their time during Covid, then there was a lull, and now getting back to normal averages. Benefits from scale and operating efficiencies as it makes acquisitions. Dominant position.

He and his team are secular bulls on the nuclear renaissance. Cheap and clean. Has second-largest stock of uranium in the world. Utilities that buy uranium are like deer in the headlights right now on uncertainty of whether Washington will broker a truce with Russia on Ukraine, bringing Russian uranium back online.

No qualms buying. Coast-to-coast Canadian bank, with modest international exposure. CWB acquisition brings both revenue and cost synergies. Good capital markets and pretty good wealth management. Overexposure to the dynamically growing Quebec has been to its advantage. Pullback is a pretty good entry point.

No problems buying this one. Owns no lifecos; prefers specialty financials, banks, or P&C insurers. Closing the gap nicely to the big league players. ROE is good, dividend grows pretty steadily.