Global Investment Roundtable
hroughout the 1990s, Canadian investors clamoured for more
foreign exposure. Let’s think back to why that was. Partly, it had
to do with the drooping dollar; in times of financial market
stress, investors took refuge in the U.S. money market. Partly it had to do
with the roller-coaster ride of commodity stocks, as gold and oil settled
into cyclical lows. Partly it was the hollowing out of various industrial
sectors, as key companies — remember BioChem Pharma, Seagram and
Newbridge Networks? — were taken over by foreign investors.
T
Roundtable Participants
• Charles Burbeck, Head of Global/
International Equities
HSBC Halbis Partners
• Anne-Mette de Place Filippini,
Vice President & Portfolio Manager
AIC Investment Services Inc.
• Rory Flynn, Fund Manager
& Portfolio Advisor
AGF International Advisors Co. Ltd.
• Bradley Radin, Senior Vice President
& Portfolio Manager,
Global Equity Management,
Franklin Templeton Investments Corp.
What’s changed now? Foreign stocks lost their allure during the bust years of
2000 to 2002, and for good reason: in many instances, valuations were far above
historical norms. At the same time, domestic investors rediscovered the virtue of
yield, whether in the form of dividends or distributions from income trusts. For
the past three years, Canadian markets have outperformed, borne aloft by commodities, financials and trusts. How long that performance will last, no one knows.
Is it time to take a second look and diversify outside of Canada? Prudence
would suggest so, if only because of the dangers associated with a concentrated
holding — in one company, one sector or, in fact, one country. Certainly, with
the abolition of the foreign property rule, there are no longer any constraints —
except the investor’s risk tolerance. To find out how risky the world beyond the
oceans and below the 49th parallel is, we got four global managers to assess the
opportunities outside Canada.
What we weren’t looking for is the mantra frequently heard in the U.S. financial media: that large-cap growth is next for outperformance. Instead, we wanted
to understand to what extent Canada stands apart from world trends; to what
extent the value and small-cap surge that has dominated the U.S. market over
the past three years has kin in other parts of the world; to what extent global
markets have worked through the excesses of TMT — the technology, media
and telecommunications stocks that dominated the late 1990s market run; and
finally, the vulnerability of global stocks to imbalances in the world economy.
Our panellists weren’t macroeconomists; they were stock pickers. Yet, the
methodology behind their stock-picking that was on frequent display: not to try
to guess where the next big thing will be, but the value that is here and now —
and outside Canada.
Sponsored By
Charles Burbeck
Head of Global / International Equities
HSBC Halbis Partners
Charles Burbeck joined HSBC Halbis
Partners as Head of Global/International
Equities in early 2005. He held an
identical position at Fortis Investments in Boston, USA, which
he joined in 2002.
There are U.S. studies that indicate
international diversification adds little
by way of excess return and only a
modest dialling down of volatility.
Are those studies relevant to Canadian
investors? Also, how closely correlated
is Canada to the U.S., given the integration of the two economies?
Bradley Radin: The benefits of diversification globally are much more pronounced for Canadian versus American
investors. The U.S. is 50% of the world
market while Canada is 3% – a very
small chunk of the overall world market.
The second angle is that the Canadian
equity market is very narrow with only
three sectors (banks, materials and
energy) representing 70% to 75% of
the Canadian marketplace. So you’re
not getting diversification on a sector
basis in Canada. These are very compelling reasons why Canadian investors
should be invested overseas.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: If you
look at the hard facts and take a 20-year
view, the correlation coefficient between
Canada and the U.S. is about two-thirds
and about half between Canada and
non-North America. In other words,
global markets, especially outside of
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Prior to 2002, Charles spent his investment career at Schroder
Investment Management in London. After joining as an analyst
in 1990, he subsequently became a fund manager and Head
of Global Sector Research where he established Schroder’s integrated global equity capability. Charles holds an MA in
Economics from the University of St. Andrews and is an
Associate of the Institute of Investment Management and Research.
North America, are not strongly correlated to Canada and investors can
add real diversification by investing
abroad.
Rory Flynn: Volatility is a pretty
interesting measure but it’s quite a
statistical measure. If, for example,
you’re holding pension fund assets
for a 10-year time frame, three-year
volatility may be interesting but it’s
not going to make a difference as to
whether or not you’ll be able to retire.
As a statistical measure, it has limited
use for most typical mutual fund investors.
We’re very much stock pickers, so what
we value is the opportunity to go to as
many places as possible.
Charles Burbeck: I would echo what’s
being said and just following along from
the last point, we’re similar in the sense
we’re stock pickers and to be able to get
access to different types of companies
in different stages of development or
different product cycles is very, very
interesting and we think creates a very
attractive opportunity set for investors.
Given the different fates of the two
North American stock markets (U.S.
& Canada) since the Great Bust, how
careful should investors be about
investing in other commodity
economies, not just Australia and
New Zealand, but some emerging
economies as well?
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini:
Investors have to be careful not to
double up on exposure, but instead
invest in stocks that provide true diversification across sectors. Also, other
markets provide better opportunities
to invest in sectors such as consumer
and healthcare stocks that are not well
represented in Canada.
Rory Flynn: We looked at markets
over the past 30 years and found three
great growth markets: the most recent
one in the mid-1990s; one in part of
the 1980s; and one in part of the 1970s.
The one in the 1990s was the tech
bubble — the great bust. In the 1980s,
it was consumer-discretionary and the
one in part of the 1970s was decidedly
resources. People thought that there
was this growth market going on, but
in reality you had a very narrowly
defined sector market.
Charles Burbeck: There are plenty of
opportunities to diversify if you’re
worried about commodity prices. In
terms of the global emerging market
index, roughly 25% is directly related
to energy and materials. That means
that 75% of emerging market companies
are not directly related to commodities
and have interesting stories and cycles
that are uncorrelated with what’s happening to commodity markets.
Bradley Radin: It’s not much good if
you try to diversify outside of Canada
but have a global portfolio that’s 75%
energy, financial, and materials. The
benefit of going global for Canadian
investors is that you can buy other
sectors besides those that might hold
up better if and when the bubble
bursts within the three dominant
Canadian sectors.
Are U.S. equities still attractive?
Rory Flynn: There has been an
unwinding of the overvaluation of
the U.S. markets since 2000. We’re
particularly finding value in some
financials at the moment. You’ve got
some of the U.S. banks — Bank of
America, Citi, US Bankcorp — these
stocks have a P/E in the low double
digits and dividend yields of 4%, so
that’s good value. There’s also a bit of
good value to be found in some of the
telecoms and some of the retailers.
The U.S. is coming back now with a
P/E of 17.4, it’s better value than it’s
been for almost a decade and we are
beginning to see some interesting value
in individual stocks.
Bradley Radin: In general, most of
our global portfolios are quite underweight in the U.S. — approximately
half-weight in most cases. Having said
that, it’s a big country with lots of stocks
so there is a chance you can find some
value even if the overall averages are
not compelling. In general, we are
finding value elsewhere.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: We’re
starting to find some good value there.
Predominantly that value has shown
up in the blue chip, large-cap stocks
that really have been dogs for a long
time — like Pfizer or Microsoft. We
believe people are overly concerned
about the long-term prospects of these
companies, so we’ve been increasing
our weight there.
The U.S. is perhaps the model economy to invest in with its diversity of
companies, industry sectors and company sizes. Are there things in the
U.S. market (and by extension across
the globe) that perhaps will have difficulty getting traction? Do you worry
that with some of the companies (like
Pfizer and GM) you might be getting
stuck in a value trap? Although they’re
trading cheaply, there’s no catalyst
there to bring these companies up.
Charles Burbeck: There are a large
number of companies that were at
some point classified as growth stocks
and now they’re known as value stocks.
You need to make sure you’re not
trapped in something that is still
deteriorating in terms of its business
fundamentals and the returns you get.
On Pfizer and GM, I still worry that
their business fundamentals are going
in the wrong direction and there are
better options elsewhere. In the long
term, the pharmaceutical sector should
still be seen as growth because there is
enormous unmet medical need and
companies that have attractive products
can still make very good returns.
Bradley Radin: There’s always a risk
that you do end up in a value trap; the
challenge of performing fundamental
analysis is to understand the sector
and company issues and to figure out
whether or not there is value at an
individual company and make a call.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini:
Trying to time a catalyst is a difficult
game. A lot of risks are reflected in
some of those stocks, particularly in
the pharma sector. To get back to
Pfizer, if you go back to the late
1990s and early 2000s, you’ll find
that stock at $50 USD a share when
the U.S. exchange rate was close to
60 cents. Now you can buy Pfizer at
$23 USD with 90 cents on the U.S.
dollar. That’s a 70% discount! People
then thought it was a great growth
stock, now no one thinks it can ever
“Investors have to be careful not to double
up on exposure, but instead invest in stocks
that provide true diversification
across sectors.”
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini
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Anne-Mette de Place Filippini, BA, MA
Vice President and Portfolio Manager
AIC Investment Services Inc.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini joined AIC
in August 2000 as Vice President, bringing
10 years of broad business experience
to AIC. Anne-Mette has been the lead
manager of AIC Global Balanced Fund since its inception and
was appointed lead manager of AIC World Equity Fund in
March 2003 and co-manager of AIC Global Diversified Fund
grow! When is pharma going to be
seen more as a growth sector again?
It’s tough to time that. We like the
sector globally.
Rory Flynn: In the U.S., the balance
of payments is a thing that will have
to be worked out. The U.S. can get out
of that problem painlessly by growing
less quickly than the global economy
for a number of years. But the U.S. also
may have an accident because a big
balance of payments deficit like that does
create the risk of one. So diversification
is good if it gets you opportunity, but
don’t walk into an opportunity blindly
and miss some of the big macro things.
To the degree that investors have been
successful in the U.S. since the post-tech
meltdown, it has been with value and
small and mid-cap stocks. How long
can that run last, or are these sectors
now fully valued?
Bradley Radin: For the average investor,
spending a lot a time trying to get that
call right isn’t worth it. It was a crazy
time for growth five or six years ago
but there was just such an extreme
disconnect between the value that
people were willing to pay for stocks
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in April 2002 (lead manager since May 2003).
Anne-Mette was formerly with strategy consulting firm Monitor
Group, and prior to that Deloitte & Touche, where she held
senior advising roles to large corporations in both Europe and
North America on business and portfolio strategy, including
mergers and acquisitions.
Anne-Mette holds a B.A. (Economics) and a Master’s (Economics)
degree from Copenhagen University. Part of her Master’s degree
was earned at the London School of Economics. Her dissertation
was written on corporate governance.
versus the earnings they would likely
receive. It was largely based on the
“greater fool” theory: “I’m going to buy
it today and somebody else will pay
maybe more for it tomorrow.” But I
expect that investors will be a little more
careful this time around and take a
closer look at actual businesses.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: It’s
interesting that what we called growth
in one era becomes value and vice versa.
Some of the great growth stocks like
telecom in the late 1990s are where
value managers are finding value today.
We call something a growth stock when
expectations of future growth are large
and something of value is supposed to
be cheap, but that can quickly change.
As a value manager, I’m happy to own
something that grows as long as I’m
not paying for that growth.
Rory Flynn: Part of the habit that
investors got into in the last few years
is they all believed they could make
20% or 30% a year. Part of the problem
people have nowadays is they believe
that if they get involved in equity
markets, they will make 20% a year.
Are these sectors fully valued? By and
large we’re happy if markets are fairly
valued. It should be a balance of fair
rather than be concerned about getting
into something that’s fully valued and
then trying to find the next hot thing.
We’re now back at and closer to a
normal healthy environment where
the typical market is at an appropriate
valuation and it’s up to the professionals
to work out the stocks that are going
to deliver a decent return.
Charles Burbeck: Mid and small-cap
values have done very well for the last
three or four years and the implication
is that we should all switch to large-cap
growth. Trying to find very large, genuine growth companies is actually quite
challenging; moreover, the semantics
of growth/value can be very misleading.
For this reason, we tend to focus more
on company specifics.
Looking globally, to what extent is it
true that large cap has faltered or that
small cap has been pushed along by the
tail winds? Has that sort of analysis
applied across the globe?
Rory Flynn: We would generally
believe that things are in and out of
fashion pretty much across the planet.
What’s in fashion across the planet?
The search for yield or downside protection; small caps (whether growth or
not); and resources have definitely been
in fashion. Some things that are out of
fashion across the planet: telecoms;
financials; and large caps. We certainly
don’t fight fashion and are happy to
invest in a good opportunity to buy
something at a good valuation.
Charles Burbeck: Correlations within
global sectors have increased in a sense.
For example, in the global auto sector
there’s been more correlation between
companies in the sector and their local
markets. And that’s happened in a lot
of areas. Even in Japan, you find that
companies tend to move within their
global sectors so if global tech or global
small cap is doing well, tech and small
cap tend to also do well in Japan. That’s
really a trend that has accelerated in
the last few years.
Bradley Radin: Most academic studies
have shown that value tends to outperform growth over the long term.
So it shouldn’t be all that much of a
surprise that it has happened recently.
Also, studies suggest that small caps
outperform large caps over the long
term. And if you use $1.5 billion U.S.
market cap as the cutoff between small
and large caps, about 80% of companies
around the world are actually small
cap. Small caps should just be part of
an investor’s portfolio for the long term.
For the past few years, Europe has
traded at multiples that have lagged
the U.S. multiples. Is that still true?
How has the highly regulated nature
of European society affected valuations and growth opportunities?
To what extent are some sectors in
Europe still working through the
1990s excesses?
Rory Flynn: Actually, Europe has
delivered earnings growth at the
same rate if not quicker than the U.S.
over the last 10, 20, 30 years. And if
valuations are deemed “lagging” — my
word is “attractive” — I’m happy to
invest there. In terms of the highly
regulated nature of Continental Europe,
that was true about two decades ago.
Today, with EU single market, no
government can treat any company —
even government-owned companies
— differently. Europe has changed
dramatically and Europe is now a big,
diverse, competitive place. The single
currency has also helped change things
dramatically. It’s a great environment
for an investor and the valuations are
more attractive than the U.S.
Charles Burbeck: The valuations in
Europe are lower and for good reason.
The economic returns for businesses
are generally lower than their U.S.
counterparts because European businesses often have higher costs, are
smaller scale and have less-incented
management. But there is enormous
opportunity. Some of the “Old Europe”
challenges have also been taken care
of, for example, the high labour costs.
Now companies are relocating plants
to places such as Eastern Europe in
order to increase their profitability.
This is an opportunity in the sense
that it’s great for Eastern Europe but
it can be used as a bargaining tool to
cut costs in Western Europe. You can
buy companies that are 30% to 40%
cheaper than their U.S. counterparts
with the scope for significant improvements in operational returns.
Bradley Radin: I’ll give you an interesting example that ties together this
notion of Old Europe being a highcost, difficult labour market in which
to produce things. One of the stocks
that I own is a company called
De’Longhi, an Italian company that
makes high-end small kitchen appliances. Up until about five years ago,
they did all of their production in
Italy but they have since transferred
about 2/3 of their production to China.
So that’s an example of a fairly forwardthinking European company that’s kept
the heart and soul of its operations in
Italy but moved the production off-shore
to China in order to do it cheaper.
There are improvements that European
companies can make. It really comes
down to what’s going on at the individual company level.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: It
looks like the European markets are
more attractively valued. They also
“We’re now back at and closer to a normal healthy
environment where the typical market is at an
appropriate valuation and it’s up to
the professionals to work out the
stocks that are going to deliver a
decent return.”
Rory Flynn
5
Rory Flynn, CFA
Fund Manager and Portfolio Advisor
AGF International Advisors Co. Ltd.
Funds advised: AGF European Equity
Class, AGF Global Financial Services
Class, AGF Global Perspective Class,
AGF International Stock Class, AGF U.S. Value Class, AGF World
Balanced Fund
Rory joined AGF in 1992. He has spent his entire investment
have a better yield. The U.K. market
yield, for example, is about 4% overall.
We always say that Europe is too
regulated but look at the auto industry. GM is an interesting example of
a big U.S. manufacturer that is having
an awful lot of trouble, due to a large
part with issues of pension and healthcare liabilities that have nothing to
do with cars. You can argue that it’s
easier for a German-based company
to restructure. In general, I would also
say that European countries are in
better shape from a fiscal and trade
balance point of view. Saving rates
are high in many countries and so
you’re also not dealing with the risk
of a highly indebted consumer rolling
over — which is the problem we may
have in the U.S.
Now we’ll flip to the other side of the
world. Asia has been different — a
tale of two economies. There’s Japan
— which we’ll get to later — and then
there’s the boom and bust Pacific Rim,
which has been highly dependent on
global investment flows or “hot money”
— as witness the currency crisis of
1997 and 1998. How do you find value
amid this volatility? How strong are
the fundamentals in Asia?
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career with AGF in Dublin. Initially an investment analyst and
fund advisor, he rose to head the Dublin research department.
Rory has developed into a world-class fund manager winning
awards as co-manager of the AGF European Equity Class. He has
broadened his investment expertise into global financial services,
as well as managing a globally competitive U.S. value fund.
Prior to joining AGF, he was a lecturer of accounting and
finance at the University of Limerick. He is a member of the
Institute of Investment Management and Research and received
his Diploma in Technical Analysis in 2003.
Charles Burbeck: There has been a
lot of change at both the macro and at
the corporate level. This is a massive
generalization, but companies and
economies are in much better shape
than they have been for some time. In
terms of deficits and debt levels, and
at the corporate level looking at balance
sheets and income statements, a lot of
hard, difficult decisions have been made
in recent times and, in general, things
are often better shaped than many
western-developed economies such as
the U.S. and parts of Europe. While
in Asia ex-Japan and other emerging
market regions such as Latin America,
Eastern Europe, South Africa and the
Middle East, there always will be turbulence and crisis. It’s something that’s
the nature of these markets but there
are many world-class businesses in these
regions that are convincing in terms of
valuation and business model relative
to developed-market companies.
Bradley Radin: Leaving Japan out
of the picture, Asia is an interesting
part of the world. I’m personally a
fan of Asian stocks generally and am
able to buy into good growth companies at fairly cheap prices. There are
certain pockets in Asia that are overvalued and there’s a lot of hype surrounding certain countries, like China
for example, that spells investment
risk. But there are ways to benefit
without paying a hype price through
stocks in other Asian countries that
“Studies suggest that small caps outperform large
caps over the long term. And if you use $1.5 billion U.S.
market cap as the cutoff between
small and large caps, about 80% of
companies around the world are
actually small cap.”
Bradley Radin
do their production in China. They
don’t have the China premium but
still provide the benefits you want
through Chinese investments.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: We
have put good weights in Asia. I’ll
take Japan out of this picture for now
as well. We’re mostly in domestic
plays — companies that are not really
big exporters into the U.S. consumer
market but play more on consumption
growth in Asian countries. Longterm, it would seem that Asia would
probably outgrow most of the rest
of the world but I would be careful of
what you pay for that growth and
how much is already in the valuation.
There’s a lot of money flowing in and
out of the markets very quickly and
things can get incredibly overheated
and can come down very quickly.
Rory Flynn: China worries me
because I’m concerned that the
Chinese don’t necessarily believe in
earnings growth. I think they’re a bit
like the Japanese were a few decades
ago: They want to be big and not
worry about profits for a few decades.
That was a recipe for disaster in
Japan. And the Chinese constitution
is very clear when it comes to property
ownership: you don’t own anything.
I’m not sure how that makes it a safe
place for western investors. On the
other hand, we are finding opportunities in Taiwan and have been assembling a group of stocks there.
The other side of the tale is Japan.
Is this recovery real?
Bradley Radin: It’s been 15 years
since the peak of the Japanese stock
market. What we had were investors
who thought that Japanese companies
could do no wrong. That all came
crashing down and here we are 16
years later and the Nikkei is not even
half of what it was back then. It was a
great year last year in the Japanese
equity market, but we’re in the bearish
camp. We’re generally underweight in
the Japanese market and my feeling is
that last year was a momentum-driven
market — lots of foreign buying —
and stocks are still expensive. For
pretty much any Japanese company
you can find a company elsewhere
that does more or less the same thing
and is cheaper. I also don’t think
they’re as shareholder-focused as a lot
of companies around the world.
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini: It has
become harder to find value in Japan.
We saw some good value opportunities three years ago but it has gotten a
lot harder. However, since corporate
Japan is largely debt-free, there’s a lot
of room to generate value by optimizing corporate balance sheets. Good
opportunities for private equity. With
some of our holdings, cash-to-market
capitalization is an astounding 50% to
60%. If some of this excess cash were
returned to shareholders, it would be
hugely value-accretive. The Japanese
yen has been such a wild card. The
efforts by the Japanese government to
hold that currency down have made it
hard for Canadian investors to really
benefit from some of those gains in
the last few years.
Rory Flynn: I do remember back in
June of 2002 standing in front of a
couple of hundred people in Canada
and somebody asked me about Sony
and I said, “Buy a PlayStation, don’t
bother with the stock.” And if you
bought a PS 2, you’re still playing with
it far more than is good for you. But
the stock hasn’t done much for you.
If someone were to ask me about the
Japanese market today, I’d say, “Wait
for November, buy a PS 3 and stock
your money elsewhere.”
Charles Burbeck: Actually, I’m very
positive on Japan. I agree that last year
was a momentum situation but, since
then, economic and corporate data
have been positive and consistent
and there are the seeds of a genuine,
autonomous recovery going on in
Japan. However, the valuation issue
is obviously critical. There’s no doubt
looking at overall macro data that
Japan doesn’t scream cheap but we think
that analysts are significantly underestimating the profits leverage that
comes from top-line recovery feeding
through to very lean cost bases. Also,
“The economic returns for businesses are generally
lower than their U.S. counterparts because European
businesses often have higher costs, are
smaller scale and have less-incented
management.”
Charles Burbeck
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Bradley Radin, CFA, MBA
Senior Vice President and
Portfolio Manager
Global Equity Management,
Franklin Templeton Investment Corp.
Bradley Radin joined the Templeton
organization in 1995 and is a Senior Vice President in the Global
Equity Management Group. He currently manages Templeton
Global Smaller Companies Fund and Bissett International Equity
Fund. In addition, Mr. Radin’s global research responsibilities
Japan tends not to be as correlated as
other equity markets like Europe, the
U.S. and some of the emerging markets.
Investors need to be very selective but
we find ourselves overweight in Japan
on a stock-by-stock basis.
Do we have a kind of a goldilocks
global economy right now or is that
under threat? Where would the threats
come from? How stable is the present
situation and have the rumblings of the
past three or four weeks harbinger or
just a necessary correction?
Anne-Mette de Place Filippini:
We’ve set ourselves for more volatility
going forward. We saw volatility at
unusually low levels for the last few
years but we may be seeing higher
volatility going forward. The trade
balance and fiscal deficit in the U.S.
and the indebtedness of the U.S.
consumer are cause for worry in terms
of global growth. This would suggest
that growth is going to slow down
in the U.S. If this happens, growth
will also slow elsewhere. We’re not
predicting a disaster, but we’re going
to return to more normalized levels
of growth.
include North American and Asian banks, as well as small cap
cyclicals. Before joining Templeton, Mr. Radin worked in the
Asian equity research department of Credit Suisse First Boston in
Hong Kong. Globally, he has also worked in Taipei and Moscow.
Mr. Radin graduated from the University of Western Ontario
with an Honours Bachelor of Business Administration degree,
Bachelor of Science degree in biophysics and Master of Business
Administration degree with a concentration in finance. He holds a
CFA designation and is a member of the Toronto Society of
Financial Analysts.
Rory Flynn: What we’ve actually seen
is maybe a bit of overconsumption in
the U.S. Overconsumption has to stop
at some stage and we believe that it
will happen in a pretty civilized fashion. Another big thing that worries us
is oil. Oil, at whatever price it is in the
last few days, is too high. We’ll see oil
at the end of the year at about half
current levels — $35 or $40 a barrel.
That will mean a big adjustment for
certain categories of stocks. The other
thing that is different about the current environment is that inflation is
back. So it’s no longer the goldilocks
economy. And while there are pressures out there that you must watch,
it’s still a pretty healthy environment.
with it. I’m more concerned about
growth than I am about inflation. In
the very long term, growth rates may
be less than they have been in the last
three or four years.
Charles Burbeck: The baton is being
passed from the U.S. consumer to
other parts of the world — notably
parts of Europe, Japan and China.
The problem is that this doesn’t always
happen in a smooth way. As for inflation,
I’m concerned in the short term. In
the long term, I’m still very positive in
terms of the secular factors of globalization and also the fact that many
independent banks around the world
are well qualified to observe and deal
This special Global Investment Roundtable
supplement is available online at advisor.ca
Sponsored By
8
Bradley Radin: We don’t really spend
a lot of time on macro-economic issues.
But as a personal view, the U.S. fiscal
deficit worries me as does global housing
prices. I would also be worried if my
Canadian investment portfolio was
too heavy in energy stocks. In terms of
slowing growth globally, if that does
happen, you would want to be in lower
priced, lower expectation, value stocks
— that’s where you want to hide if the
world does slow down. ●
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