Commentaries

Highlights With improved valuations, the Fund added to long credit positions, while also topping up short positions in equity index ETFs. We believe that the divergence between credit and equities, which has been widening since March, will eventually mean revert, as credit conditions are typically a leading indicator of economic activity and asset prices. The […]

Highlights April saw a return to a more normalized merger arbitrage market following a volatile March fraught with regulatory pushback and increased uncertainty due to the regional banking crisis. A benefit of the elevated volatility and regulatory risk was a widening of arbitrage spreads. We continue to see favourable conditions for deal activity in the […]

Highlights The strongest contributors to the Fund were Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc., Emergent BioSolutions Inc., Esperion Therapeutics Inc., and Bausch Health. Decliners in the Fund included McDermott International Inc., PHI Group Inc., and American Tire Distributors Inc. In April, the Fund added a new position in DISH Network Corporation which is building out an ambitious 5G […]

Highlights At the end of the quarter, small caps were trading at a valuation of 14.5x forward P/E in the S&P 600 Index compared to 19.0x for the S&P 500 Index – a 4.5x discount. This is a far cry from the wide premium that small caps traded at for the decade prior to 2020. […]

Highlights Several of our shorter duration holdings experienced solid gains in April, including secured bonds of Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC (private) and Life Time Group Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LTH). In banks, our focus was on AT1 securities issued by the two largest Canadian banks trading prices of 75% of par or lower. We established […]

Highlights The Fund returned 2.6% in the first quarter. Over the last three years, performance has been strong at 17.3%1. One of the major areas of market concern during the quarter was the meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank. We do not own any U.S regional banks in the Fund, nor any banks for that matter. […]

Highlights A positive development during the month was banks returning to provide buyout debt financing. March was the peak month of SPAC maturities for 2023 with the industry now fully lapping the peak of the 2020/21 SPAC bubble by the typical two-year maturity date. As the size of the SPAC sector and the number of […]

Highlights Small-cap stocks have historically traded at a premium to large caps given their higher growth potential. However, we are now in a market when small caps trade at a significant discount to large caps.  We are continuing to rotate our portfolio into higher quality companies where we see the best risk/reward profiles such as […]

Highlights For the three months ended March 31, 2023, the Fund generated a 1.9% return.[1] Several high-quality, defensive, relatively longer-dated lines, such as Loblaw Companies Ltd., Verisign Inc. and Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. bolstered performance. There are signs suggesting the hiking cycle is nearing its peak. Should the rate hikes to date slow the economy […]