It’s back to business for global equity funds in 2010, which is to say they’re losing money again.
Mackenzie Cundill Value C, the largest fund in the category, lost 4 per cent for the year to Sept. 1. Mackenzie Ivy Foreign Equity, as conservative as they come, was down 1.9 per cent. Templeton Growth, one of oldest funds in the business, was down 6.7 per cent.
Global funds did well in 2009, but that was an anomaly. On average, they lost 2.6 per cent a year over the decade ended July 31, bad enough to turn $1,000 into $768. And yet, the financial industry keeps the faith in global investing.
A selection of online portfolio-building tools were tested for this column and each suggested a weighting in global stocks that was close to or greater than the weighting in Canadian stocks. Anything out of line here? Money managers and academics say no.
At Hahn Investment Stewards, the bond and stock segments of the flagship international balanced portfolio are split 50-50 between domestic and global securities. What about all the losses sustained by investors in global funds?
“That’s looking into the rearview mirror,” said Tyler Mordy, director of research at Hahn.
Investors have been doing a lot of that lately as they selectively pare down their exposure to the stock market. Selling of global and international funds (global funds invest anywhere, while international funds avoid North America) in the 12 months to July 31 exceeded new purchases by $3.6-billion, according to Credo Consulting. By comparison, net selling of Canadian equity funds totalled $3.1-billion over the same period.
Total holdings in domestic equity funds at July 31 was $129.9-billion, while U.S., global and international equity fund assets totalled $83-billion. And yet Canada represents only about 4.5 per cent of the world’s stock market.
“Canadian investors have this ridiculously strong home bias,” Mr. Mordy said. “It’s observed in every country, but it’s particularly acute in Canada.”
The expert view is that global content is a vital portfolio building block. To gauge the emphasis on global content, I used several asset allocation calculators offered by online brokerage firms to build a portfolio for a long-term growth-oriented retirement portfolio. Total suggested foreign content, including both bonds and stocks, ranged from 50 to 57.5 per cent.
For a more conservative balanced portfolio, the suggested foreign weighting ranged from 25 per cent to 35 per cent.
Sean Cleary, a finance professor at the Queen's School of Business in Kingston, said that if he wasn’t so bullish on Canada right now he would go with a breakdown of 20 per cent Canadian stocks and 80 per cent global. Instead, he now suggests a 50-50 split.
“I kind of like Canadian equities right now – they’re a little pricier than global markets, but the factors that are driving our economy have long-term potential.”
Prof. Cleary was referring to the heavy weighting that oil and other commodities have in the Canadian market. There’s growing demand for raw materials from emerging economies like Brazil, China and India, which have not been subject to the same economic slowdown as the developed world.
Of course, the skew toward commodities – and financials – in the Canadian market is an argument for diversifying globally. Almost three-quarters of the S&P/TSX composite index is accounted for by the energy, materials and financial sectors.
Global diversification has severe limitations, mind you. “As we saw in the financial crisis, all global stock markets moved in the same direction,” Prof. Cleary said.
Investing experts call this correlation – the tendency for market and other kinds of assets to move up and down at the same time (for more on correlation, check out this recent Portfolio Strategy column: tgam.ca/kl2). At IceCap Asset Management in Halifax, their goal in portfolio building is to work around the high correlation between global stock markets.
