OPTIMISM #30 - June 16, 2021

Dear clients and friends,

As the market gets closer to fairly valued, there is little to chat about. 

A flurry of dividends landed in our accounts at the end of May and beginning of June.

Being paid without working is fun.

A friend of mine likes to buy poor quality, zero dividend, stocks with high hopes.  I shudder at the thought.

To me that’s like getting a puppy or being over fifty years of age and having another child.

My sister in-law came over with their new golden retriever puppy named Stanley this week.

They had him tied up for 20 minutes while we had dinner and he chewed a hole in our lawn.

It was cute for about half an hour.  There is no remote control to shut him off.

I like owning shares of companies that I really don’t have to think about. They literally take care of themselves.

For insider trading, there are still optimistic buyers.

Heather Reisman recently invested over $446,000 in shares of Indigo/ Chapters.  Interesting.

Bill Holland, head of CI Mutual Funds, bought another 50,000 shares.

Claude Mongeau, Director at Cenovus, bought $794,000 worth of shares recently.

Scotiabank Strategist Hugo St-Marie believes the outperformance of the TSX (Canadian stocks) over the S&P 500 (U.S. market) will continue for the long term.  (Globe and Mail, June 9th, 2021)

Bank of America Analysts, who rarely mention Canadian companies, recommend [buying shares of] Bank of Nova Scotia for patient investors.  (Globe June 9th)

A nice reminder from Greg who took this from a favourite dividend growth website.

“You want to buy the very best companies and you want to buy them cheap. And it's not very often you get to do this.” Biff Matthews ROB Oct 24 2008

He correctly continues by saying, “I mean, this is not rocket science right? 

Yet we continue to see people run to the exit when they should be seeking to enter. I guess I should really thank them for doing so.

 

And now, I have transitioned from thinking about the growth opportunity provided to focusing on stable income generated through dividends as it is hard to find bargains currently.

Building some cash or liquidity reserves to position for when the opportunity presents itself.

 

What I have found is that discipline is hard to apply and there is much written on this.“

There it is for us.  Everything we need to know in a few sentences.  Thank you Greg.

People look at me strangely when I say how much I don’t know about the future, yet how comfortable I am owning such a high percentage of stocks.

Have a great week.