Equity Funds
Our Mission
We have applied our expertise in research and testing to develop a process to find the common elements that help stocks generate consistent performance in both strong and weak market conditions. This discipline keeps us objective and focused, and helps our clients achieve their investment goals.
Investment Strategy
We develop investment solutions across the equity spectrum, each with its own unique approach. We have a ‘keep-it-simple’ mantra that allows our clients to easily understand how these strategies will meet their individual needs. Our energy is focused on how we can achieve the optimal balance between return and risk with every portfolio we construct.
Our strategies are unique and are designed to identify and profit from investing in inefficient areas of the market that are overlooked by large fund companies.
Guiding Principles
Rules Based: Follow A Proven Discipline
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- Design a comprehensive strategy that withstands the test of time
- Implement the model in a systematic way and enforce a strict sell discipline
- Monitor the efficacy of the strategy and allow it to evolve based on analysis
Opportunistic: Look For Undiscovered Excellence
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- Look for opportunities that are overlooked or inaccessible to large institutions
- Mid- to small-cap portfolios and limited-capacity strategies are two examples
- Position sizes should all be meaningful and not determined by market cap
Discerning: Act With Purpose, Focus and Patience
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- Only buy stocks meeting purchase criterion and avoid emotional biases
- Be patient when replacing sells and hold cash if no opportunities exist at the time
- Maintain a strict sell discipline
Our internally-managed investment funds are build on a proprietary quantitative and technical foundation, and are managed using a rules-based and disciplined methodology.
Our Funds
MVP Fund
Fund Goal: Deliver superior quality equity returns by opportunistically investing in the top prospective 20-25 Canadian stocks as determined by our time-tested Quantitative screens and actively managed overlay.
Methodology: The companies that rise to the top of our screens meriting consideration for the portfolio exhibit the best combination of the following factors::
- Rapidly accelerating earnings and growth expectations;
- Highly undervalued relative to their earnings potential; or
- Exhibiting solid price momentum.
The model is indifferent to market capitalization and, as a result, tends to over-weight Mid- & Small-Cap stocks. With typically little to no overlap with the TSX 60 or most typical Canadian Equity portfolios with a Large-Cap bias, the MVP Fund complements these types of commonly held investments.
Risk controls to lock in profits and mitigate losses are a vital component of the mandate. The strategy is active and tends to buy and sell stocks more frequently than many passive approaches, with a typical holding period of 6 -12 months. The management team has successfully employed this mechanism for more than 25 years. Over that period, market dynamics have shifted, resulting in modifications and improvements to the process. The MVP Fund represents the best and most current version of this time-tested discipline.
STEADY Fund
Client Goal: The STEADY Fund suits clients that are looking for a cornerstone North American portfolio at the core of their equity allocation.
Architecture: The investment strategy is defensive and targets companies that have low volatility in their earnings and price, and less sensitivity to the direction of the broad market. At the same time, the strategy endeavors to find stocks that are well positioned to outperform their peers due to their higher profitability profiles, strong earnings and revenue growth and more favourable earnings expectations.
Design: The STEADY Fund owns a higher proportion of mid- to large-cap stocks and is generally fully invested at all times. The strategy is also dynamic in its country allocation and will strategically overweight either the U.S. or Canada depending on prevailing trends. The portfolio is well diversified, targets 40-50 North American stocks and typically holds positions for an average of 9-12 months.
GO Fund
Client Goal: The GO Fund suits clients that are looking for diversified exposure to global equities and active management that targets above-average returns over the course of a market cycle.
Architecture: The GO Fund invests in a diversified basket of U.S.-listed country Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that represent more that 90% of the world’s market capitalization. Recognizing that global markets are not perfectly correlated, the fund is designed to capitalize on the strength of targeted global markets at different times.
Design: The GO Fund holds up to 25 global-regional ETFs, and position weights are based on each country’s respective market capitalization. In its pursuit of superior market-relative returns, the fund overweights country ETFs with the highest performance prospects based on their price momentum and other key technical indicators while underweighting or avoiding countries with weak price-related technical indicators. During periods of broad global equity weakness, the fund may hold meaningful cash reserves to preserve capital.
TOTAL RETURN FUND
Multi-Dimensional Diversification by Asset Class, Manager, Strategy, Industry, Geography, Liquidity
Client Goal: The Total Return Fund’s goal is to deliver consistent positive returns that are uncorrelated to the public markets. The Total Return Fund’s strategy to achieve that objective is to hold a diversified portfolio of underlying funds with a total return objective that mirrors the behavior of large public pension plans, with an absolute return focus designed to mitigate/minimize cyclicality risk.
Design: The Total Return Fund will be a fund-of-funds, utilizing best-in-class fund managers that are specialists in their asset class. The Total Return Fund will seek multi-dimensional diversification by asset and sub-asset class (including public and private vehicles), investment manager and strategy, industry,
geography and liquidity. The Total Return Fund is expected to invest in a mix of publicly and privately offered equity and fixed income mutual funds, hedged and unhedged, as well as privately offered funds with exposure to private equity, private credit, infrastructure and real estate portfolios