MacNicol’s Monthly Commentary – November 2022

With this commentary, we plan to communicate with you every month about our thoughts on the markets, some snapshots of metrics, a section on behavioural investing and finally an update on MacNicol & Associates Asset Management (MAAM). We hope you enjoy this information, and it allows you to better understand what we see going on in the marketplace.

“The Guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swim in the sea.”
– Mao Zedong

 

Bottom…

One area I like to turn to for guidance on where financial markets could potentially be headed next is Canadian retail mutual fund sales data. At their extremes, retail mutual fund sales data are bits of information worth scrutinizing because they can signal opportunity for those who inspect them closely. Retail mutual fund sales data can be thought about in the same way as the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is a lagging economic indicator. Lagging because employers don’t fire people in anticipation of a recession, they fire people as a result of a recession. The unemployment rate then provides you with almost no insight into to the likelihood of a pending recession yet confirms with a very high degree of confidence the existence of a recent recession that you might have thought you noticed earlier. So, is there anything I have noticed in Canadian mutual fund sales statistics that leads me to confirm with a very high degree of confidence that financial markets have potentially bottomed out? As a matter of fact, there is:

 

Click the link below to download the full commentary…

Click here: The Monthly November 2022