Skip to main content
globe investor

Looking for investing ideas? Here’s your weekly digest of the Globe’s latest insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies plus what investors need to know for the week ahead.



This Manulife dividend fund manager has doubled the return of the TSX over the past five years. Here’s what he’s buying and selling

Open this photo in gallery:

Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

Prakash Chaudhari is holding a lot of cash right now, but the portfolio manager says it’s not a preventive move in the event of a market downturn. “We don’t concern ourselves with trying to forecast an economic downturn," says the managing director and senior portfolio manager at Manulife Investment Management. Instead, he prepares his fund to be resilient. Mr. Chaudhari and his team oversee more than $22-billion in assets across six mutual funds and other institutional mandates. He’s the lead manager of the $1.8-billion Manulife Dividend Income Plus fund. The F series of this fund has returned 19.3 per cent year-to-date, as of May 31, and 6.5 per cent over the past year. The Globe and Mail recently spoke with him about what he’s been buying and selling and his current cash position.

Read more: Introducing the Frugal Dividend portfolio

How ETF investors make extra work for themselves and hurt their returns

Concerned that the popular new class of balanced ETFs are too simple to be effective in your portfolio? If you answered yes, congratulations on your successful brainwashing by Bay Street, Rob Carrick writes. Simple is a virtue in investing, not a sign of weakness or laziness. The investing universe is well populated by people destroying value by over-thinking things. And yet, suspicion of simplicity is common. A reader recently asked about using balanced exchange-traded funds like the Vanguard Balanced ETF Portfolio and the iShares Core Balanced ETF Portfolio. He wanted some comment on the idea of adding additional conservative stocks to generate dividends. All the stocks he was thinking of adding are built into VBAL and XBAL. Buying some extra shares of these stocks to complement the balanced portfolio could ramp up dividend income, but it would also result in extra risk.

More from Rob Carrick: Take the CPP at 60? It sometimes makes sense

Read more: The rise of ETFs is making life miserable for Canada’s mutual fund industry

What BMO’s chief strategist is expecting for U.S. and Canadian markets in the second half of this year

Amid the ongoing trade turmoil, Fed policy concerns, slowing global growth, and incessant recession prognostications, the resiliency of U.S. stocks was on full display during the first half of the year as the S&P 500 climbed to new all-time highs, writes Brian Belski, BMO’s chief investment strategist. Despite the ebbs and flow of the market and spikes in volatility, we remain confident in our 2019 S&P 500 price target of 3,000.

Within Canada, although the sharp recovery in the first half is unlikely to be matched in the second half of 2019, we continue to believe Canadian equities provide attractive value and relative stability. Our forecast is still for the S&P/TSX Composite Index to reach 17,000 by year-end, representing a modest gain just shy of 4 per cent from current levels.

If you’re feeling bold, here’s a chance to get into a top fund in a risky sector

An opportunity has opened to get some of the smartest high-yield-bond fund managers in the country working on your portfolio, Rob Carrick writes. The PH&N High Yield Bond Fund reopened for new investors on Thursday after being capped for new clients back in April, 2016, because of concerns about a lack of good investment opportunities. The fund won’t likely be open to new investors for long, and therein lies a dilemma: PH&N High Yield Bond is one of the best names in its category, but now seems a less than ideal time to start shovelling money into high-yield bonds.

More from Rob Carrick: You will never master your finances until you do this

Read more: Canadians are passing up billions of dollars in pension plan contributions from their employers

Get the latest investing insights delivered right to your inbox three times a week, with the Globe Investor newsletter. Sign up here.

Five things to know about markets at the half-year mark

That may have been the stock market’s best first-half performance in a decade, but it didn’t really feel like it, Tim Shufelt writes. While the S&P/TSX Composite Index posted nearly a 16 per cent total return, much of the upside was driven by a simple rebound from last fall’s correction, which itself was widely seen as an overreaction. Meanwhile, the economic fallout from the U.S.’s multifaceted trade war cast a pall over the first half and continues to darken the outlook through the rest of the year. Despite North American indexes sitting close to record highs, economic readings increasingly suggest the global economy is slowing. For what investors might expect in the remainder of the year, we look at five big themes from an eventful first half.

Read more: Everyone is scrambling for a safe haven in the stock market, but do they even exist?

What investors need to know for the week ahead

There are holiday closings in the week ahead for North American markets. In Canada, stock and bond markets are closed Monday for Canada Day. In the United States, markets are closed Thursday for Independence Day, and shut down early on Wednesday (1 p.m. for stocks, 2 p.m. for bonds). Economic data on tap include: Canadian and U.S. imports, exports and trade balance for May, plus U.S. factory orders for May (Wednesday); Eurozone retail sales for May (Thursday); and Canadian and U.S. employment numbers for June (Friday). Companies releasing earning include PepsiCo.

Looking for more investing ideas and opinions?

Short sales on the TSX: What bearish investors are betting against

A dividend stock nearing oversold territory with a 36% expected return

Gordon Pape’s mailbag: Buying IPOs, RRSP taxation and inheritance investing tips

Empire raises its dividend - plus more investing stars and dogs for the week

The week’s most oversold and overbought stocks on the TSX

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe