News and Insights

The third quarter of 2024 saw positive returns for investors across stocks, bonds, and cash, aided by lower inflation and a reduction in interest rates.

North American economies have shown resilience, growing despite rising interest rates, persistent inflation and intensifying geopolitical tensions.

The equity markets continued their upward trajectory following a robust fourth quarter in 2023. Several benchmarks even set new records in the first quarter of 2024.

It was a good year for the markets in terms of performance, despite the pessimism of forecasters and the high volatility. Looking at the ups and downs of the chart for the Canadian stock index below, it’s easy to understand how investors sometimes felt like everything was going well while at other times, it was going badly.

After solid gains in the first half of 2023, equities posted a negative return in the third quarter. Bonds also retreated over the past three months as interest rates rose and “higher for longer” has become the new mantra for interest rates.

During the first six months of 2023, several factors have impacted the global economy and stock markets. Rising inflation, stress on the balance sheets of US regional banks, and the rapid development of artificial intelligence were among the most influential factors. We will review each of these elements and then explain how they contributed to the current state of the markets.

Both equity and fixed income markets wrapped up a volatile first quarter that included a wild swing in interest rate expectations, a mini bank crisis culminating in the forced take-over of Credit Suisse and even an oil supply shock as OPEC unexpectedly announced production cuts.

2022 in review. Our portfolios fared much better during a challenging year.

Global markets declined again in the third quarter as inflation remains near multi-decade highs, geopolitical tensions escalated further and the...

It has been a difficult start as markets faced a laundry list of concerns, notably new COVID lockdowns and economic weakness in China, Russia/Ukraine war, surging inflation...