December 2017 Pricing Commentary

The five ABC Funds outperformed their respective investment benchmarks for the year 2017. This achievement was primarily due to our portfolios’ significant U.S. equity overweighting relative to Canada, which provided our Funds with materially higher returns. Additionally, our 100% $U.S. currency hedge enabled our portfolios to mitigate currency risk and volatility.

In planning our investment strategy for 2018 we are very comfortable with our American security weighting, particularly in the U.S. technology, healthcare and financial sectors. Selective ABC favoured holdings include Aetna (the object of a takeover by CVS), Amazon, Apple, Becton Dickinson, Boeing, The Home Depot, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Tencent Holdings, MasterCard and Visa.

Wishing everyone a very healthy and happy 2018.

Irwin A. Michael, President
I.A. Michael Investment Counsel Ltd.