Insights

Bank of Montreal (BMO) – We don’t really own a lot of BMO (we probably own more through our holdings of Guardian Capital than through BMO itself) but I know we have a lot of clients who are interested in the banks in general. BMO was the first Canadian...

My wrist is still healing and looks like it will take awhile. So I'm trying a dictation service this morning in order to write these notes. If any of you use a dictation service that you think is particularly good, please let me know. ESG Investing –...

Monday is a holiday in Canada, as such our “offices” will be closed. I banged up my wrist earlier this week. So I’m down to one hand typing. This may be a short note. As an aside, a tall person wearing a mask that reduces peripheral vision should not...

Vivendi (VIVHY) – Vivendi is set to spin out its shares of Universal Music Group in September. I think a case could easily be made that the value of the UMG stake exceeds the whole value that Vivendi is currently trading for. The fly in the ointment here...

Employee Retirement Plans – I was thinking the other day about the utility of my smart phone. I probably only know how to use 25% of its functionality. It’s still wonderful for what I do know how to use but there are probably other things that it can...

Covid – A few months ago I noted that North and South Dakota’s Covid case rates would be important to track as they were going to be the first states near heard immunity. Yesterday, North Dakota reported just 31 new cases and South Dakota reported 42...

Two to Three Times – Michael Norton from the Harvard School of Business published a paper in 2018 where they asked 2,000 people with net worth of over $1 million how happy they were on a scale of 1 to 10, and how much money they would need to get to 10...

US Jobs – The US published a new jobs number on Friday that most people are describing as very weak. Members of the US administration took that opportunity to say that the weak job numbers are precisely why they can’t stop providing stimulus – because...

I see that some of the more speculative portions of the market are blowing up here. For example, Virgin Galactic, which is investigating space tourism and was a very hot stock last year despite (or maybe because) they have no earnings or even sales looks...