Blog for December 24th, 2025
Baby season (in more ways than one), GWM expansion, and thoughts on the markets.
Happy holidays! I hope everyone is going to get a good break and spend some time doing fun things with your families. Christmas sure has come around very fast for me this year. Work has been exceptionally busy and so I have been remiss at getting a blog done for a while now. My apologies.
There are a lot of good things going on at Goacher Wealth Management. Portfolio management has been on the top of the list. We have been reviewing client portfolios, reviewing models and security selection, and reinvesting maturing bonds. This is a big process behind the scenes and is still ongoing.
Our team has also undergone a review of team functions and processes in order to bring the best experience to our clients. We call it the AAA client experience and it is our team’s mandate to execute on that. Of course, we always appreciate feedback as to what we can constructively do better.
Beginning in the New Year, we are also expanding our team! We are welcoming two new Investment Advisors into our fold. We are really excited for the new developments on our team and our expansion. This came about from our team review and because of our AAA client experience mandate.
You may recall Ryan O’Connor from days gone by. Ryan was an associate with our team a few years ago, went out on his own to build a business as an Investment Advisor, and is returning. Ryan will be helping with portfolio management, helping to service the GWM client base, and continuing to build his own practice under us. Ryan lives in Pickering, is married to Natasha and has three active, young boys. The family is active in soccer and snowboarding.
Jamie Sodhi is new to most of you. Jamie has been successfully building his own practice in our office for a few years now. Jamie will be helping to service the GWM client base and continuing to build his own practice. Jamie lives in Whitby, is married to Natasha (easy for me to remember), and has two young daughters. Jamie is great at all sports especially golf and pickleball.
Welcome aboard!
There are no other changes on the team. Leanne, Jennifer, Paula, Mark and I are still at it and will be for a while! We are having too much fun still.
So what else is going on? Hmmm….
Alex and Yvonne are pregnant. Due in July so Denise and I are going to be first-time grandparents. Pretty exciting although we don’t have to do too much at this point. Alex and Yvonne are in Toronto for the winter renovating a condo and then will be heading back out west to Pemberton – we think. Believe us, this changes regularly. We believe it is this millennial generation…always going by the seat of their pants, moving provinces and countries, moving between jobs, not setting down roots etc. Every parent we know says the same thing, so we are not alone in our thinking. OMG…we are sounding so old right now. Who knows? Maybe that generation got it right.
Addison has applied to a number of universities across Canada for health or bio science. This is after our cross Canada tour this summer that took us east to Halifax, west to Vancouver, and central to Calgary. We also toured a few in Ontario. She has a number of offers of acceptance already, which is really cool. That is not surprising as she is a really great kid with great marks. I would like to say it is because of me and it really is because of her mother. She will figure out where she lands sometime in the new year.
Pretty soon it will be just Denise and me on our own. I keep asking if she still likes me, and so far so good – whew – although she tells me I am more and more like my mother - ouch. We are going to be empty nesters once Addison goes to university. We will still have Monty and Matilda, and they are like children. Matilda’s pneumonia is back and she has been on antibiotics for two months now. It is slowly getting better. Monty had his ear torn up rough housing with the other dogs at daycare, and today he development an eye infection. I swear I work to pay their vet bills.
The year of Miles’ 60th birthday has been a whirl win. Denise and I made it to Japan for skiing, Barbados for sun, across Canada (Tofino and Jasper are highlights) for university tours, back country canoeing, and Quebec City (to celebrate our third anniversary). We are going to squeeze one more trip in before my 61st birthday in February. We are heading to Tanzania for the first time for a two-week African safari. We are excited about this one. This trip is definitely on our bucket list. It has been quite the experience just trying to get ready for the trip. Has anyone tried to buy green and beige summer clothes in winter? Almost impossible! I would love to hear about anyone else’s safari adventures and any travel tips as we have no expectations other than to see some animals and not get eaten. Apparently, it is baby season in January.
We will have limited access to emails during that time and my team is here for anything you may need.
As for portfolios and the markets, we have things well in hand. As you know we moved to the sidelines early in the year and are carrying a higher level of cash than normal. The markets surged of course this year despite all the craziness going on the world. We participated in some of that growth despite the higher levels of cash. It shows we had the right selection of stocks, just a little less than we could have held in them. Still, returns have been good this year and we have yet to run into any clients unhappy with the fact we moved to the sidelines a touch.
So, what is next for the markets? Truthfully, no idea. Personally, I believe tariffs are yesterday’s news. The Bank of Canada has mostly finished their rate cutting. The Federal Reserve has a few smaller cuts to come in 2027, which will be well received by the markets. The focus will be on the global economy and its resilience, especially that of the USA. We are starting to see a few cracks in the USA economy as unemployment is on the rise and inflation continues to hang around, although manageable so far. It occurs to me that Trump is starting to fall out of favour just a touch as his party rejects some of his ideas. Election wins by Democrats across the country in Republican strongholds will weigh heavily on him and his party. Change may be coming and not until November of next year when the mid term elections are decided.
Most recently we moved a small amount of cash holdings in TFSA accounts into stocks. Only a small amount. We added some new names in the artificial intelligence space, data center and energy pipeline build out, and defense sector. We added Taiwan Semiconductor and Palantir for direct AI exposure. We added Brookfield Asset Management and a Uranium ETF for increased exposure to the data center build out. We added South Bow for a play on the build out of the energy sector and pipelines in Canada. We also added a European defense sector ETF for the rearmament of Europe.
Our team will be undergoing a review and rebalance of the Canadian, USA and international models with an eye to rebalancing these models in the new year.
That’s about it for now. I wish you the very best for the holidays and the new year. I am excited to hear about all the fun you will be getting up to in 2026!
Miles on behalf of the (expanded) team at Goacher Wealth Management.