January 2021 Pricing Commentary

While North American market indices were negatively impacted by temporary price volatility at the end of January, we believe that our portfolios are well positioned for the year. In fact, despite the slight January market setback, a number of our ABC Funds holdings rose over 5% during the month, including: TC Energy, Enbridge, Pembina Pipeline, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, Alibaba, Tencent, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Danaher, and WPT Industrial REIT.

Consistent with our positive economic and investment outlook, we intend to keep our portfolios fully invested in 2021. We are committed to our 1/3 Canada, 2/3 U.S. common share geographic weightings and will continue to hedge our currency exposure in a range of 70% – 100%.

Our five portfolios are diversified in high quality large capitalization, dividend paying equities, which we expect to continue to outperform comparatively lower yielding fixed income securities. Furthermore, as the North American economies recover, we anticipate that many of these holdings will increase their dividend payouts and share buyback programs.

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