“There’s a new market regime in 2023,” said Justin Thomson, chief investment officer and head of international equity at T. Rowe Price, during the Canadian Investment Review’s 2023 Global Investment Conference. “It’s characterized by higher trend inflation, rates normalization, liquidity withdrawals, de-globalization and elevated volatility.” While he said he expects these conditions will encourage equity […]
Consensus expectations for U.S. inflation and interest rates in 2023 are overly optimistic, said Robert Forsyth, head of SPDR exchange-traded funds strategy and research at State Street Global Advisors SPDR, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2022 Defined Benefit Investment Forum. “Our view is that the futures market is still pricing in an […]
Why should defined benefit pension plans invest in Canadian equity markets at all? It’s a question many DB plan sponsors began asking themselves in the mid-1990s. At that time, the federal government removed foreign content limitations on pension plans and again, later, when it made similar changes for individual registered retirement savings plans. These regulatory […]
The median Canadian defined benefit pension plan’s investments declined 8.8 per cent during the second quarter of 2022, according to a new report by Northern Trust Canada. The report draws from the Northern Trust Canada universe, which tracks the performance of Canadian DB plans. It also found the median plan’s investments were down 14.5 per cent […]
Canada’s institutional investors saw assets decline by 4.61 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, according to the BNY Mellon Canadian master trust universe. With respect to non-traditional asset classes, real estate delivered the highest performance, with a quarterly median return of 4.65 per cent. Among traditional asset classes, Canadian equities performed best. During the […]
The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan generated an 11.28 per cent return in 2021, led by its public and private equity portfolios. “It was a strong year — we had a return of 11.28 per cent and hit an all-time high for our assets,” says Jeff Wendling, the pension fund’s president and chief executive officer. […]
Canadian pension plans saw returns averaging about 0.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2021, according to a new report by Northern Trust Canada. Despite the sluggish growth in the quarter, gains from the first half of the year have buoyed most Canadian pension plans. The report found the median plan had seen the […]
The University of Toronto Asset Management Corp. has earned a 13 per cent return on its pension portfolio for 2019, and a 12.9 per cent return on its endowment portfolio, net of all fees and expenses. While the 2019 results were strong, and beat the university’s target return of 6.2 per cent, they lagged the […]
In its November, semi-annual index review, MSCI Inc., implemented the third increase in a series of planned increases to China A shares within its emerging markets indexes. Within its China index specifically, MSCI will be adding 204 new constituents, mostly mid-cap companies. The inclusion factor of the existing shares will also be increased. China A […]
Central banks seem to be changing their tunes, with the Federal Reserve expected to cut rates twice before the year is out, according to Manulife Investment Management’s third quarter outlook. The European Central Bank, noted the outlook, is also likely to take a move dovish tone, with additional monetary easing measures, including rate cuts, expected […]