Chris Blumas (Extract) Money manager Chris Blumas understands why many investors are reluctant to buy stocks right now, given the economic threats, including growing predictions of recession.
But the way he sees it, the market is a lot less risky today because valuations for many securities have already dropped significantly, which means the potential for better returns is even higher for investors socking away funds for the long term.
“That doesn’t mean that things couldn’t go lower over the short term, but for anybody who has a time horizon beyond three to five years, now is a pretty attractive time to invest if you can look beyond the shorter-term volatility,” says Mr. Blumas, a Toronto-based portfolio manager at Raymond James Investment Counsel Ltd., a multi-manager platform with about $1-billion in assets under management.
“I am seeing lots of value in the market today,” adds Mr. Blumas, who oversees about $10-million since joining Raymond James in March, 2021, following several years of managing money for clients at different Canadian-based firms.
His all-equity portfolios are down 2.4 per cent over the past year as of June 30, on a total return basis, compared with an 11.1-per-cent drop in total returns for the S&P 500 and a 3.9-per-cent drop for the S&P/TSX Composite Index over the same period.
The Globe and Mail recently spoke to Mr. Blumas about what he’s been buying and selling and one stock he regrets selling.
What’s a stock that you wish you bought or didn’t sell?
Intact Financial
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the property and casualty insurance company. I owned it earlier in my career and sold it around mid-2012 at about $60 per share. I was looking at the valuation difference between Intact and insurer Fairfax Financial
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at the time. I decided to sell Intact because it had a much higher premium. The stock is now trading at about $180 per share. You can likely understand how a missed 200-per-cent return sticks with a person! That said, the experience helped me evolve as an investor, which is why I often stay with compounders. Earlier in my career, I was more value-focused and would sell when a stock hits its fair value. In the end, if you didn’t find something as good to replace it with, it’s a bad decision.
What investing advice do you give family members when they ask?
Find something great and continue to own it. The speculative stocks you see go up quickly can go down just as fast. We’re seeing that now in areas like cryptocurrency. I try to steer people away from speculation and get them to focus instead on compounding. The reality is that big money is made over the long term.