Meshke’s Minute

Today we wanted to focus on the Kensington Private Equity strategy within our portfolios, as they released a 9% cash distribution which reflects the continuing strong performance of the Kensington Private Equity Fund. What clients are going to see on their statements is that cash came into the account, while at the same time the Net Asset Value of ...

Today we saw the Bank of Canada increase the benchmark rate by 25bps, which is now the fourth rate-hike experienced since June 2017.  Canada continues to follow the path of US rate hikes and is now sitting at 1.5% . This will cause Canada's big 6 banks to increase their interest rates causing variable mortgages and other variable rate debt to ...

Over the last few months we have seen volatility come back into the market, with larger swings both to the upside and downsides of the market.Most of the movement in the markets has been driven by geopolitical events which include the talk of trade wars, where we have seen the US and China impose tariffs on each other's goods. While we are always a...

Over the past few weeks, we have started to see volatility pick up in the stock market.  On February 5 ,  the Dow Jones experienced an intraday drop of 1,600 points before closing only down 1,175 points. While 10-year US bond Yields opened lower on February 5 at 2.77%, over the course of the year the 10-year yield has continued to rise fr...

On Jan 26, 2017, PWM Private Wealth Counsel purchased a 5-year AutoCallable Structured note on the REIT index for the High Growth TFSA accounts.  If the REIT index was at or above par after one year, a client's return was 17%, and the note was automatically called away.  On Jan 26, 2018, the note did just that.  Your Portfolio Manage...

Now in its 10th year, Canada's Tax-free Savings Account (TFSA) program has rapidly become the most popular way to grow savings tax-free for short-term savings goals as well as to supplement long-term retirement saving provided by traditional Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs), non-registered savings, and pensions. Unlike the situation with...

About two weeks ago, our clients would have received an envelope in the mail regarding a proxy vote on how the Kensington Private Equity Fund (KEN115) wants to change its distribution and fees accordingly. Over the past two weeks, PWM Private Wealth Counsel has been in talks with the Kensington Private Equity portfolio managers over the proposed pr...

From time to time we find better opportunities in the structured note space. In the middle of November, we took advantage of rolling two of our current Principal at Risk structured notes on the TSX60 which were getting 6% and 7.75% respectively and moved them into SSP1407 - US Bank note that has a 7.8% per year yield with 30% downside protection. W...

From time to time, we get asked about positions which show a loss on client statements, but in actuality are performing well (i.e., book value is higher than market value).One position, in particular, we are asked about a lot is the CCL876 – CCL Global Market Neutral investment.This strategy has a 2017 YTD return of 4.80% (Source:gold.globeinvestor...