Forecasting bond and stock returns is almost impossible to get right over short time horizons. But over longer time frames the methodology I used in my November 2021 blog Stock Return CAPEr: The Next Decade’s Returns has a good fit with the historical data, particularly the S&P 500. I last updated the estimated returns for US and Canadian stocks in January 2023. Since then, the S&P 500 has been on a terrific run, up 40% in Canadian dollars. Does that mean there is no esCAPE from lower returns over the next 10 years?
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Active Management II: Proceed With Caution
Back in 2020 I looked at the returns of active Canadian Funds versus low cost ETFs. I thought it was time to revisit the relative performance of Canadian funds after going through the market gyrations of the last four years. Would the results show that high net worth investors still need to proceed with caution when trying to find funds that can outperform ETFs?
Worldwide Wealth
I thought it would be interesting to pass along some high level information on world wealth. The numbers and charts are from the latest UBS Global Wealth Report, which looks at data as of the end of 2022. I found UBS’s highlights of where the wealth is, the number of millionaires, and the concentration of wealth eye-opening, and the inequality between the top and the bottom of the wealth pyramid eye-popping.
Foreign Fund Facts
In last month’s blog Fun Fund Facts I looked at the performance rankings of Canadian equity funds. The facts showed that over longer time periods there was more of a tendency for bottom funds to remain in the bottom quartile than for top funds to remain in the top quartile, and that using deciles to screen is better than using quartiles. I have expanded the fund facts to those that invest in foreign stocks. Let’s see how the top and bottom decile Canadian equity fund results compare with the results for the top and bottom decile global equity funds.
Fun Fund Facts
When looking at investment funds (pooled or mutual) it is natural to want to keep the top performing funds and ditch the worst performers. But is this a good approach? To help answer this question, at least for Canadian equity funds, I had some fun with the funds’ facts on historical return rankings.
Are Big Banks Better At Canadian Funds?
Last month I looked at the performance of the big bank balanced mutual funds, which was unsurprisingly underwhelming. This month I dig deeper by looking at the big banks’ biggest Canadian equity and fixed income funds. Do their performance results show they have a competitive advantage investing in their home markets given their knowledge and experience with Canada’s economy, businesses, and markets?
Can you bank on big bank balanced funds?
The big banks in Canada dominate the $1.8 trillion market of long-term mutual funds in Canada, with a 50% share of the funds outstanding. And within long-term mutual funds, balanced funds represent the largest portion at 50%[1]. Clearly Canadians have a lot of their money in the big bank balanced mutual funds. Given how important these funds are to the retirement plans of Canadians, let’s look at the performance of the Big 5’s big balanced mutual funds vs a passive portfolio of ETFs. Do the vast resources the big banks spend on research teams and portfolio management result in outperformance?
Riding The Bull
As we get into the final stages of the U.S. Federal Reserve raising the federal funds rate, it is natural to think more about a potential bull market rather than a bear market. While so far the low in the S&P 500 was last October, we still don’t have enough data to say that we have entered a new bull market – it will only be clear in hindsight. In the meantime we can compare the valuations of the S&P 500 at the start and end of previous bull markets to the October and current valuations. If October does turn out to have been the start of the next bull market, we can estimate whether the ride will be wild or tame.
Did You Hear The Bell?
In my May 2022 blog Barely A Bear I mentioned the old market adage that they don’t ring a bell at the bottom of a bear market. We never know where the bottom is until we can clearly see it in the rear-view mirror. So far it looks like mid October was the low for the U.S. market, so I thought it was timely to look at whether the bear market is over, and what that means for your asset allocation.
Relative Return Review
Back in March of 2021, in my blog Springing Forward, I wrote about the performance of Canadian, international, emerging market, U.S. value, and U.S. small cap stocks versus the U.S. large cap stocks. After many years of underperformance, U.S. value and small cap stocks had finally started to outperform U.S. large cap stocks. But Canadian, international, and emerging market stocks were only keeping pace. A lot has happened in the markets in the two years since that blog with central banks raising rates to tame inflation and stocks enduring a bear market. So let’s review how the relative returns have evolved.