So far, this has been a crappy quarter to date. Although thankfully it isn’t a quarter where I should have gone all-index (the S&P 500 is down ever so slightly), I really feel like I have badly unperformed – so far I’m underwater about 150bps or so, which is not a good feeling. My decision-making faculties have not been in focus. For the year, I’m still barely in the black, but my relative performance benchmark has been horrific. If I was an 8 cylinder engine, I’m firing on about 2 of them.
That said, I have sold off and cashed a lot of the portfolio and I will only start to consider re-deploying after the upcoming Canadian election. There will be a lot at stake, especially with respect to the oil and gas industry.
It is pretty evident by the non-presence of the Canadian government at the Trans-Mountain pipeline appeal that the incumbent Liberals are not really interested in seeing the project proceed – or at least they’re happy to stall it out. The six motions (concerning the second round of consultations with First Nations) received no evidence from the government – it seemed pretty likely that if the government did provide evidence, the appeal court would have likely struck down the appeal application.
So this is a pretty polarizing election. If the Conservatives don’t get a majority government, it is likely that status quo will continue – avoiding Western Canadian investments will generally be wise as Liberal governments tend to focus on Toronto and everything east of it (Bombardier, SNC Lavalin, etc.).
The oddsmakers at 338 right now are projecting a 70% chance that the Liberals will get the most seats, but this will undoubtedly change through the campaign. In 2015, at this point the NDP were leading polls nationally, but this changed pretty quickly!
In 2019 we have the following:
In other words – the campaign will matter. Those lines will shift trajectory as people start to dial in – I figure around mid to late September.