Where to find Sri Iyer, Guardian Capital:

Srikanth Iyer on Linkedin

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“You don’t have to be brilliant, just wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.” Charlie Munger

Welcome to Raise Your Average, our deep dive journey into learning from the people and process behind the world of investing. Through conversations with leaders in the investments game, we peel back the layers of the onion on how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time, their energy, and their dollars.

We are all students and we are all teachers. We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Come hang out with us for a while and raise your average, as we raise ours.

Music credit: In Hip Hop, Paul Velchev (8MJZA6T3LK)

Episodes

125 Dividend Payers and Growers: Resilient During Periods of High Inflation and Rising Rates

We had the pleasure of interviewing Sri Iyer, Managing Director and Head of i3 Investments™ recently about what is, in our humble opinion, a seminal conversation on Dividend Investing.

2022 has been a challenging year so far for most investors. Both stock prices and bond prices have taken a beating, marking perhaps the abrupt end to a 40-year period of gains like no other, and a rate of inflation not seen since 1983.

It’s time for advisors and investors to take steps to immunize their portfolios against the challenges of the current environment of inflation volatility and rising interest rates.

Investing in companies with consistent and growing dividends can provide core building blocks to grow your capital while managing risk in the current environment and over the long term, regardless of changing market conditions, including during periods of high inflation and rising rates.

Sri Iyer is among a minority of leading portfolio managers who have successfully devoted their lives to a profound study and implementation of quantitative approaches to the sphere of dividend investing that for the better part of the last two decades, has gotten less notice by most investors.

This is most likely because since the GFC (c. 2008-9), growth stocks, or rather, ‘high duration’ stocks stole the show. During that time Iyer and his team at Guardian Capital sharpened their dividend investing skates to more accurately identify which companies had dividend paying strength and sustainability, and those which had a high probability of growing their dividends; and, on the credit risk management side, they also handily determined a methodology they could implement to identify dividend cutters.

Beginning in 2017, Iyer and his team began their dive into big ‘alternative sources’ data with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to sift through tens of millions of points of abstract and empirical statistics, the objective being to bring them to the end zone (think football) of the dividend stock selection and risk management process.

Listen in as we wend our way through what is a truly seminal deep-dive into what is the impetus of seeking success at dividend investing in the first place. Even if you believe you understand what are the sound premises of dividend investing, this is truly time well spent on a subject you may be under-appreciating right about now.

Where to find Sri Iyer, Guardian Capital:

Guardian Capital LP

Episodes

124 Meb Faber: The Problem with Long Term Investing

Given the year 2022 has shaped up to be so far, we thought this would be a great time to catch up with one of the true luminaries of modern investing to talk about he wraps his head around successful long-term investing.

Meb Faber, illustrious co-founder and CIO at Cambria Asset Management joins Pierre and Adam to catch up on markets and investing and how he has hacked the long term investing problem.

Our conversation begins with a famous quote from another investing legend and goes from there. We get into an elemental discussion about what investors can begin to do now, where to invest, where to diversify, and how to think of setting themselves up for success going forward.

Highlights, we discuss:

• Lots of people say they are long term investors, but…

• how do you set yourself for long term investing success

• what’s the biggest problem in long-term investing – why?

• how can you set yourself up (what investments?) so that you can remain a long-term investor no matter what happens (like this year)

• How do you transition from 60/40 to something elementally more durable?

• What are the current market’s portfolio building blocks – why?

• How much time is required?

• What are the easy hurdles, the structural basic investments that should be added?

• What to invest to diverge from hope that the past bubble will recover

• Is 60:40 over?

• ‘Trinity’ portfolio construction

• Is technology providing better recipes?

• What are the ingredients of a portfolio that allows you to remain invested no matter what happens?

• Be contrarian – What is contrarian?

• What’s the way around inflation and higher rates

• What is the most contrarian investment you can make today?

• falling in ‘love’ with your investments complicates everything

• what is all that matters in investing over the long term?

• “To be a good investor, you have to be a good loser.”

• Question: Assuming no tax repercussions, if you could liquidate your entire portfolio and start over anew, what would you put in your new portfolio?

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Where to find Meb Faber:

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Meb Faber on Linkedin

Meb Faber on Twitter

Cambria Investment Management

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Where to find us:

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Samantha McDonald on Linkedin

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“You don’t have to be brilliant, just wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.” Charlie Munger

We are all students and we are all teachers. We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Come hang out with us for a while and raise your average, as we raise ours.

Music credit: In Hip Hop, Paul Velchev (8MJZA6T3LK)

Episodes

123 The Intended and Unforeseen Opportunities of ESG

ESG has gathered a lot of steam as an essential and strategic investment component for both returns, with long term positive fundamentals, and risk management.

Around roughly 1400 studies have found a positive relationship between ESG scores on the one hand and financial returns on the other, whether measured by equity returns or profitability or valuation multiples. Another factor is the cost of capital. Evidence suggests that a better ESG score translates to about a 10 percent lower cost of capital as the RISKS that affect your business, in terms of its ability to operate, are reduced if you have a strong ESG proposition.

For these reasons, publicly traded companies that are actively implementing ESG in their operations are expected to be granted a valuation and risk premium as a result ‘ESG goodwill,’ versus those companies doing less.

Samantha McDonald, Vice President, ESG Research and Engagement, and Jonathan Needham, Vice President & Director, Lead of ETF Distribution, at TD Asset Management Inc. (TDAM), join us to talk about the approach that TDAM is taking to ESG, as well as the suite of TD ESG ETFs. These ETFs invest in stocks and bonds that have strong ESG metrics and leverage exclusive Morningstar Indexes and research from Sustainalytics, a Morningstar® company and a globally recognized leader in ESG risk ratings and research.

Highlights include:

How do you define your view on ESG?
How TDAM defines a gradual approach vs. a binary approach to ESG – Engagement vs. divestment?
How TDAM’s shareholder engagement on behalf of investors’ alignments works
The Aha! moment for advisors
TDAM’s ESG ETFs screening methodology – sector-neutral Morningstar Sustainability Indexes
market-like exposure with significantly lower ESG risk, relative to benchmarks
Position sizing? Benchmark replacements.
Silver linings? – Taking advantage of tax-loss harvesting to increase pure beta ESG exposure.
How do Morningstar Sustainable Indexes navigate geo-political concerns?
Investors can now also get beta exposure to ESG corporate bond indexes
highest quality, high liquidity investment grade corporate credits for yield
Building blocks, maximum diversification, low or no tracking error.
How do the screening rules work?
What is greenwashing?

Where to find our guests:

Jonathan Needham on Linkedin

For more on TDAM ETFs, visit td.com/etfs

Episodes

Ivana Delevska – Investment Thesis for Industrial Technology Stocks

There’s a race going on in the industrial sector to modernize, technologize, compete, as well as de-carbonize.

Ivana Delevska, Chief Investment Officer, SPEAR Invest, joined us to discuss the her investment thesis and strategy, underlined by her firm’s research that following roughly 5 years of underinvestment, industrial companies have significant capital expenditures in front of them to catch up on, which will lead to greater adoption of industrial technology. We get into the important developments that may make for some outsized opportunities in both the industrial and technology sectors, in the not so distant future.

Ms. Delevska is the Founder and CIO of SPEAR. She founded the Advisor in 2021 after spending 14 years evaluating and investing in industrial and industrial technology companies.

Ms. Delevska spent four years covering Multi-Industry companies at Deutsche Bank as a Vice President (2017-2018) and Gordon Haskett as a Director (2018-2021). Prior to that time, she spent 10 years as a Senior Analyst on the buy-side at several long/short hedge fund platforms: Tiger Management, Millennium Management, Citadel Asset Management, and Davidson Kempner.

Ivana started her career at JP Morgan in the Mergers and

Acquisitions Group. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2006 with a BA in Economics.

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Where to find Ivana Delevska and SPEAR Invest:

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Ivana Delevska on Linkedin

Ivana Delevska on Twitter

SPEAR Invest for up to date holdings and prospectus

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Where to find the Raise Your Average crew:

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Stephen Jenkins, Co-CIO, Sionna Investment Managers

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“You don’t have to be brilliant, just wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.” Charlie Munger

We are all students and we are all teachers. We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Come hang out with us for a while and raise your average, as we raise ours.

Music credit: In Hip Hop, Paul Velchev (8MJZA6T3LK)

Episodes

120 Value Stocks Are Back w/ Stephen Jenkins and Jackie Au

Every stock market correction is unique, with its own causes and consequences. There are some similarities between the current market decline and past declines.

Take today’s example; following a period of speculation and excess that began in 2020, tech stocks have taken a beating, some from as early as Q2 2021. It’s reminiscent of the tech rout in 2000, when value stocks outperformed technology stocks.

In fact, value stocks are outperforming, and providing both meaningful relative positive returns, across the board in this stock market rout. Value is outperforming in large-cap U.S., small-cap U.S. segments, foreign-developed stocks and emerging market stocks. If you’re wondering whether this resurgence in value stocks is fleeting, it’s advisable to recall that the forces that are shaping inflation and inflationary volatility are likely to outlast our expectations, our hopes.

Value investing great Stephen Jenkins, Co-CIO, and Portfolio Manager, and Jackie Au, Portfolio Manager, Sionna Investment Managers join us this episode for an enlightening and insightful conversation, sharing their wisdom about value investing’s long term durability, how they do value investing, the relative underperformance of value factor vs. growth factor (value stocks did what value stocks always do, but they didn’t do as well as growth stocks), and how the regime change of inflationary volatility and rising rates that has crushed growth stocks is favourable to value investors.

We also get a good look at some of the names and sectors they favour, with Stephen and Jackie talking about names they are holding, that fulfill their definitions of value.

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Where to find the Stephen Jenkins and Jackie Au:

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Jackie Au on Linkedin

Sionna Investments

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Where to find the Raise Your Average crew:

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Rodrigo Gordillo

Nicolas Piquard on Linkedin

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“You don’t have to be brilliant, just wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.” Charlie Munger

We are all students and we are all teachers. We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Come hang out with us for a while and raise your average, as we raise ours.

Music credit: In Hip Hop, Paul Velchev (8MJZA6T3LK)

Episodes

Nicolas Piquard: The Lowdown on Uranium, Lithium & Carbon

Nicolas Piquard, Vice-President & Portfolio Manager with Horizons ETFs Canada, joined us to talk about the significance of accessing three key commodity-focused sectors and asset classes in the context of today’s global “low-carbon” ambitions.

The biggest challenge for investors in 2022 is reconciling the need for diversification, largely in allocating more portfolio exposure to commodities and hard assets, with the fact that many of these sectors and asset classes are not aligned with responsible investing.

In this episode we explore the much-debated commodities that are expected to play a significant role in defining energy, consumption, industrial production – sectors and asset classes that could benefit from inflation, while offering exposure to the longer-term trends in renewable energy and carbon emission reduction.

We get into the nuts and bolts of how investors can more effectively align themselves with inflation using commodity-focused thematic strategies focused on the potential long term drivers of return in Uranium, Lithium, Carbon and Carbon Credits.

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Where to find Nicolas Piquard:

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ETFs discussed:

HURA – Horizons Global Uranium Index ETF

HLIT – Horizons Global Lithium Producers Index ETF

CARB – Carbon Credits ETF

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Where to find the Raise Your Average crew:

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HURA – Horizons Global Uranium Index ETF

Episodes

Key Investment Themes in Tumultuous '22

Mark Noble, Executive Vice President, ETF Strategy joins us to discuss the reasons markets have become so fragile in the wake of COVID, the inflation trend, rising rates and the war in the Ukraine which are defining the beginning of perhaps a new economic and market regime, and giving sharp definition to a number of key investment themes.

We discuss the investing climate, and thematic investment trends and opportunities, some of which are still in their infancy, and some that are more mature, but have been made all the more enticing post this year’s tumultuous first trimester and stock market’s profound volatility and correction.

We hope you find the discussion insightful and useful.

Where to find Mark Noble:

Mark Noble on Linkedin

Thematic ETFs Mentioned:

HLIT – Horizons Global Lithium Producers Index ETF

HMMJ – Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF

CHPS – Horizons Global Semiconductor Index ETF

Episodes

Does Seasonal Rotation Work?

Brooke Thackray, Research Analyst, Horizons ETFs Management, and Kim Inglis, Portfolio Manager at Raymond James Canada join us for a fascinating deep dive looking at ‘seasonal rotation’ investment strategy, the revealing and repetitive behavioural patterns that define key undercurrents in markets, and how he approaches the nuanced task of navigating annual seasonal uptrends and downtrends across a variety of equity markets, equity sectors, the bond market, and other asset categories.

Brooke Thackray provides the research and analysis that guides the Horizons Seasonal Rotation ETF, ticker HAC. We quickly set aside the question of “How has the Seasonal Rotation strategy worked?” and get into the nuts and bolts of Thackray’s research and implementation – “How do you do it?”

It’s noteworthy to mention here that HAC is Canada’s longest tenured actively-managed, multi-asset strategy ETF.

What you’ll discover is that Thackray’s approach to seasonal rotation, and the technical analysis work that supports the strategy’s strict, but flexible, and systematic approach has for the better part of 12 years, been an underloved darling among actively managed ETFs.

Enjoy the episode! Like, follow, and subscribe to our channel, and leave us a comment. Please help us get the word out and grow our following.

Where to find Brooke Thackray:

Brooke Thackray on LinkedIn

Brooke Thackray – alphaMountain

Horizons Seasonal Rotation ETF (HAC)

Where to find Kim Inglis:

Kim Inglis on Linkedin

Kim Inglis – Inglis Private Investment Counsel

Kim Inglis – Raymond James Canada

Where to find the Raise Your Average crew: