LOOK LONG-TERM DURING STOCK MARKET MADNESS
Stock answers after a crazy few weeks
Worried about this month’s stockmarket madness? Investment managers say it isn’t time to sell everything and stuff it all under a mattress.
Marc Cevey, chief executive of HSBC Global Asset Management (Canada) Ltd., says the recent downturn in the market is not a repeat of the 2008-09 financial crisis.
“We see the conditions as being very different this time around and because of that, and because we don’t view it as a financial crisis of a systemic nature, we actually think it represents a better opportunity” he said.
Cevey says investors should examine their portfolios to see if they still have the asset mix they want. If the equity portion of their portfolio has fallen, it may be time to rebalance and move money from bonds into stocks.
He conceded that it may be a scary time for investors, but if you have a long-term focus and you don’t believe the world is falling apart, “at some point this creates some value.”
“You’ve just got to look at dividend yields,” he said. “Dividend yields virtually in every market around the world are in excess of 3 per cent, which is far in excess of what you’re going to get from fixed income or cash.”
Don’t expect a grocery break
Canadians can expect high prices for produce to last at least several more weeks as a result of the weak loonie and weather issues in crop-growing areas, one of the country’s largest grocery chains said last week.
In addition to the adverse impact of the lower Canadian dollar, flooding has contributed to supply shortages and price increases on produce from California and Mexico, said Claude Tessier, president of Sobeys Quebec.
“From what we hear, the situation is going to be for the next three weeks and then we’ll see how things evolve (along) the west coast,” Tessier told reporters after Sobeys’ CEO Marc Poulin spoke to the Canadian Club.
The company, which also operates banners such as IGA, Safeway and FreshCo, is struggling to deal with the worst situation in 30 years by trying to import fresh food from other growing areas such as Florida, Morocco and Spain, Tessier said.
Young Canadians lack retirement smarts: Survey
Nearly a third of young Canadians admit they are “not at all knowledgeable” about retirement savings plans, according to a survey for TD Bank.
The report also suggested that a large proportion of those aged 18 to 33 are uninformed about what RRSPs can and cannot be used for.
Only half of those surveyed knew that money in an RRSP could be used to help buy their first home, while just 28 per cent knew it could be used to help further their education later in life under the lifelong learning plan.
The survey also found that many young Canadians believed they could use RRSP savings to pay for many things that are not allowed.
The online poll done by Environics Research for TD Bank surveyed 2,115 respondents aged 18 or older including 613 between 18 and 33 between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5, 2015. The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.