December 2019 Pricing Commentary

The 2019 stock market run continued into the month of December, climbing a formidable “wall of worry” of investor pessimism relating to global recession fears, an inverted yield curve, U.S. China trade negotiations, presidential impeachment proceedings, the UK election, and Brexit. In fact, the worst investor fears were never realized and, instead, North American equity markets produced surprisingly exceptional performance for the year.

All five ABC Funds ended 2019 with gains of 26.4% to 27.9% significantly outperforming our S&P TSX index benchmark. These returns were bolstered by our 60% weighting of large capitalization U.S. common stocks, our fully-invested portfolio positioning throughout the year, and our 100% currency hedge.

Among our outperforming ABC Funds’ common stocks during December include: Alibaba, Apple, Activision Blizzard, Canadian Pacific Railway, JP Morgan, Keyera, NVIDIA, and Tencent.

As we enter 2020 we remain optimistic and intend to maintain a similar portfolio composition to that of 2019.

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