Friday Market Insights – Goodbye to 2020 and Happy Holidays

Leslie Cliff: [00:00:04] So, well, welcome. This is our last video Friday Insight video of twenty, twenty and hopefully twenty twenty one is a much better year for everyone. I’m Leslie Cliff, co-founder of Genus Capital, and I’m here today with Wayne Wachell, our chief investment officer and other co-founder. Now we have a couple of insights for the week. Wayne, what would happen in the markets this week?

Wayne Wachell: [00:00:30] Well is this vaccine side and it was launched positive things coming out of that and people looking to the future, good things. But also just right now, we’re in the peak of the COVID that’s having an impact as well in terms of shutdowns and issues with ICE use and, you know, really big concerns. And so the market went sideways and there’s some volatility down and back up again towards the other week. And it was it was more a growthy kind of week or so. covid winners did a little better than the value type trades or cyclical trade because of the concerns of the Colgin. So sort of the value trade we think is going to play out into next year, but it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back until we get some clear sailing through into the spring, probably, possibly, or once the vaccines get into into into the population to impact that to that effect.

Leslie Cliff: [00:01:24] But values had a pretty good quarter, hasn’t it?

Wayne Wachell: [00:01:26] It’s not a very good quarter. It’s come off the bottom very nicely. But it’s it’s like I said, two steps forward, one step back. But it’s basically it’s making progress. And we still think the the it’s lined up for next year. If you look what’s going to happen, you know, based on our models are all positive now for the for the for the markets. They’re part of the positive for cyclicals, positive for commodities. And if you look into next year, you can see Dr. Copper taking off that she needs bond rates. I look at money supply globally is growing dramatically, which leads to economic growth. We’re seeing forecast for next year around five or six percent. That means higher bond rates, much like a crazy high bond rates, the bond rates going higher, the long end. But in the short end the Fed’s going to be on hold. So that’s a steeper yield curve. And that usually is good for value stocks, good for banks, for example, and good for value stocks. So we think it’s going to this trend is going to continue. But right now, we’re in a bit of a speed bump with the cold that spike here.

Leslie Cliff: [00:02:27] So I what about was a big, big news in the cannabis sector in Canada this this week, a big merger. Maybe tell us a little bit about the merger or a little bit of a Genus view on the sector. And if we all know stocks or when we might own the stocks, et cetera, what what are your views there?

Wayne Wachell: [00:02:47] Well, I guess the short answer is not yet. It’s too soon. They’ve all that’s been blown out till today, for example, which was involved in the merger was a one hundred one hundred fifty bucks. I think it’s now down to about I think today on the news, it popped about fifteen percent or something like that. It’s around nine dollars. So they all had loose haircuts. They were driven up by speculation, by sheer speculation, lousy business models and great promotion, when you put it that way. And it went to crazy prices and then came back down to earth. The big hope now is, of course, that there’s and it’s going to open up. The US will open up, and there will be this green wave, as they say, in the US, where the states will start opening up and allowing more and more cannabis into the place. It’s going to take some time. Will the Canadian players be the winners in that scenario? I don’t know. I think it’s going to be bigger players from the US that are maybe involved in alcohol, alcohol or tobacco already. That might be the winners anyways. And they still have to get their acts together. And we’re also we’re also at Genus were two minds of all these kinds of stocks know we could play them longer term for Mark, for a more conventional clients, but for our sustainable clients, that ESG type clients, we’re not going to play them right away. Really. If you look at cannabis stock, it’s really a composition of three different things. It’s like a tobacco stock, a hawk, alcohol stock and a drug and a pharmacy. And so unless until we see a pure pharma play in the cannabis, we’re not going to buy those stocks for our ESG type clients. So even if they are good, good returns, just because of the health effects on the on the tobacco side, if you will, or alcohol aside.

Leslie Cliff: [00:04:35] I find the whole thing kind of funny. I this is the last week of so I want to make this actually a little snippet of the year’s insights. We’re having a seminar with the twenty twenty in review and twenty one forecast. It’s going to be a webinar this year, January twenty eighth. You’ll get at your invitation. But I just want to give you a short preview of just the review of Twenty Twenty and I had talked about this last April. Just I just want to review what happened to Genus and our equity portfolios in twenty twenty. Just really quickly. I’m really proud of our investment team, Wayne and his team. We did not see the pandemic coming. I recall somebody asking a question at our seminar last January. What about this flu in China? And then the answer was, well, unless it affects consumer consumption, it’s not an issue. And of course, so we were not. Not visionaries and what’s going to happen there, but once it became apparent that this was a pandemic, global pandemic, the investment team went to work. They were not frozen at the controls and they made big sector rotations. You probably recall Wayne you sold a lot of energy stocks, a lot of bank stocks and bought a lot of health care stocks, a lot of it stocks, a lot of consumer staples that covid winners and you. And now those trades were all done in February and March. What’s interesting to me is by about May, June, we were already starting to unwind some of those covid trades to get back into more conventional value stocks, more economically sensitive stocks, materials and industrials particularly. So we didn’t sell the IT and we still underweight banks. We still are underweight energy. But we really got this barbell happening that you put in place in June. So I just want to say kudos to Bad. We missed the big, big story we didn’t sell in January, but you certainly did a great job of pivoting and getting on top of things.

Wayne Wachell: [00:06:43] Well, at the beginning of the year, too, we were very positive on the economy and the markets we were in had a slowdown last year in twenty nineteen. And we were coming out of that and the Fed was already printing money like crazy. Our models were all green, green and saying go. And we loaded up. We were ready for the economic sensitives and boom, we got hit, we got hit. And so we had to skate fast and made a quick recovery and got out and some of the losers and we rotated where we now have more cyclicals in the portfolio now, I would say, than the technology where we’re there. We still haven’t gone down the bottom rung of the losers, the airlines, the hotels, the shippers, the shipping companies. So we’re we’re sticking with those might have some solvency problems. And our models are still saying stay away from from these ones there. So we’re watching. But they’re looking for signs. But but still, we have enough. We think we have lots of value and we have enough financials and industrials materials that are doing well. And we think there’s going to be a global recovery next year, global acceleration that’s going to be good for cyclical stocks. And it should be good for Canada as well.

Leslie Cliff: [00:07:57] Good. Well, I think we’re going to stop there WayneI take an opportunity to say to our clients, a big thank you for being with us this year and asking more questions, being more involved. It’s been an anxious time for everybody. I don’t fly anymore. But whenever I did fly when the plane landed in and the pilot says to everybody, we know you have options and we thank you for your business. I always think of I wish I could say that to all my clients. So we know you have options and we thank you for your business. But I particularly wanted to take a moment and say Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, all the best. I know all of us will be missing family members over the holidays that we would prefer to see and won’t be able to see. And we’re thinking of all our clients and wish you the very, very best. So please put in your calendar January twenty eight. You’ll get an email about that. But that will be our year in review and the forecast for twenty twenty one.

Leslie Cliff: [00:09:00] Wayne would you.

Wayne Wachell: [00:09:02] I want to Say all the best over the holiday season and we’re glad 20, 20 years behind us. We made it through that. We all survived, we survived it and hopefully it’s going to be a better year together next year together. Our family and friends in person hopefully come mid-year and third quarter of next year. But all the best and a better twenty, twenty one.

Leslie Cliff: [00:09:24] Thank you very much.