“All investment evaluations should begin by measuring risk.” — Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman – Berkshire Hathaway We are old fashioned when it comes to our definition of risk. We concur with the dictionary’s basic term, […]
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting global shutdown of major parts of the economy, many of which remain closed, have created considerable distress in credit markets. By late March, the amount of US distressed debt had […]
The investment world changed dramatically in March. Stable, well run businesses seemingly became impaired in the blink of an eye. When the economy shut down, we immediately devoted a lot of time evaluating balance sheet […]
When the facts change, we change our minds The nature of most human activity is that the facts involved tend to change, but often not as abruptly, and rarely on such a wide scale as […]
Assessing the trinity of risk is a key pillar of Pender’s investment strategy at all times, but during a financial crisis, when the risks increase, it becomes more crucial than ever to double and triple […]
Investors had largely ignored COVID-19 for over a month, but now emotions have started to get the better of cooler heads, and markets have reacted. Extreme fear has taken over. Unfortunately, emotional trading can quickly […]
Index funds, or funds that passively track indexes, have a role to play in investor portfolios. Jack Bogle created the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1976, the first index fund. He had the most noble […]
There is no longer an “easy button” in fixed income whereby investors can earn relatively high real returns from invested instruments guaranteed by the government. While most investors still construct their portfolio with a mix […]
We’ve been asked a lot over the past week about whether or not we have exposure to certain headline housing stocks in our equity portfolios. Fortunately, the answer is no. We think this is a […]
There are two different scenarios that we consider when we try to mitigate the effects of risk in the Pender Corporate Bond Fund. The two chief risks in the bond market – credit risk and […]
Almost all investments come with an element of risk but does this risk contribute to your return? Sharpe ratio is one of the calculations available to investors to assess returns on a risk-adjusted basis – […]
Beta is a measure that investors can use when assessing a potential investment for volatility. Beta measures correlation to the market (or a benchmark) and how susceptible a stock or fund is to the fluctuations […]
Alpha is the measure of a fund’s actual performance above its anticipated performance, as predicted by beta. Take the fund’s performance against its benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis to ascertain the excess. This relative outperformance […]
At Pender, we consider ourselves owners of a business, not just its stock, which means that when we think about risk we believe that real investment risk is not measured by fluctuations in a stock’s […]
Paraphrasing Charlie Munger, as investors, all we want to know is where we are going to die, so we won’t go there. Common sense dictates that investors should avoid overcrowded trades in companies with lots […]
Early in 2016, we are witness to a “hard assets” liquidation frenzy, the likes of which have not been seen for many years. The great commodities supercycle that was supposed to accompany the rise of […]
“There will be recessions and there will be stock market declines. If you don’t understand that’s going to happen, then you’re not ready and you won’t do well in the markets” – Peter Lynch There’s no […]
Incoming Pender Corporate Bond Fund manager, Geoff Castle, brings a strong credit discipline to the Pender investment team. Here, we focus on sector exposures and the areas of opportunity he sees in the market.
Incoming Pender Corporate Bond Fund manager, Geoff Castle, brings a strong credit discipline to the Pender investment team. Here, we focus on how he is addressing the balance between credit quality, default risk and realizing […]
Duration is a measure of a bond’s price sensitivity to a change in interest rates. It is a key factor in differentiating how funds are positioned for interest rate risk. The longer the duration (the […]
During the stock market’s inevitable periodic declines, we believe it is helpful to reread Buffett’s “Mr. Market” allegory because it can help reduce decisions that might be regrettable later (see extract and link below).
