David Picton, President & CEO, Picton Investments – Sub-advisor for Counsel Canadian Growth

Probably the biggest couple of themes are just the amounts of stimulus that exist everywhere in the world. Central banks have been cutting rates around the world for the last couple of years. The US has recently joined the fray. Even with inflation rates above target, they're out there putting stimulus into the pipeline. Fiscal stimulus is also massive. Governments around the world have had to adjust to the new world order, so they are spending more on infrastructure projects, they're spending more on trying to develop trade relationships. And obviously, the US is spending a massive amount of money, mostly around tax cuts and the like. And then you've got this other third big driver of securities, which is the massive capital spending boom around the AI trend. So you don't often have all of those things occurring simultaneously with a big net kind of wealth effect in place that's really helping to buoy the economy. So there is a chance that we start to see as a result of a surging economy around the world some real change in those securities that have been driving things. And if you look outside of the big large cap companies in the US, there's a lot of companies that represent pretty good value that are about to see their earnings growth accelerate.

Mark Hamlin, Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Mackenzie Investments: Mackenzie Investments sub-advises the fixed income component for a range of Counsel Portfolios and Canada Life Mutual Funds.

If we look at Canada, we think that you're in a little bit of a sweet spot right now. So, there's been significant support from the Bank of Canada. They've cut rates, so that should be a tailwind for consumers, so we think that that's a positive. You've also had a change in leadership in the government and there seem to be a lot of new policies coming in there that are long term positive for Canada. So, a little bit of a change in terms of investments, whether that's pipelines, whether that's natural gas. So we think that there can be kind of both fiscal and monetary support and that should be good for growth in general, good for various industries. You might think about the oil and gas industry, but also industrials, that kind of thing.

Lisa Conroy, Portfolio Manager, Product Specialist, Fundamental Equity, Conno, Clark & Lunn Investment Management, Sub advisor for Canada Life Canadian Fundamental Equity Fund

We're excited about the outlook for Canadian equities and we're also excited about active management within Canada given the type of recovery we expect to play out. So starting first with Canada, we have just been through a long period of US outperformance post great financial crisis with lower rates, the growth of their tech industry and growth stocks and US exceptionalism around growth led to outperformance. Our feeling is that we are in the midst of a regime shift that's moving us more back to what 2000 to 2005 was like where there was upward pressure on, you know, commodities as China reopened. Today, it is driven by power generation, by AI infrastructure, by elevated inflation over the medium term and demand for precious metals. All of that feeds really well into the strengths of the Canadian market. We make up over half the MSCI world gold companies. We have above average exposure to natural gas, to copper, to uranium, and very well suited for a commodity boom that we expect to play out. And then the second piece we're excited about is as we look out to this economic recovery, we are positive on the markets, we're positive on the economy looking forwards, but we do feel like it's, we do projecting that it's gonna be a uneven recovery. We've already started to see stock dispersion start to really occur within sectors and that's a really attractive environment for active management and one that we're looking forward to.

David Picton

At PICTON, we're trying to focus on positive fundamental change. And so if you start to see a broadening of the economy, you're likely to see earnings growth start to accelerate, especially in earlier cycle industries. So for instance, you might see consumers start to pick up and so consumer discretionary names start to play. In the case in Canada, we've got a very big one called, Dollarama for instance, which is an important player that benefits from spending trends. Earlier stage, things like the transportation area start to pick up. The railway companies fit into that and Canada's got some very big ones in that case. CP Rail being one of them. You move into the financials, which tend to benefit from a steepening yield curve like we're seeing today. And again, financials are a big dominant place within Canada. We're using a little bit of diversification in the US to have a company called Rocket Mortgage, which would also benefit if long-term rates started to come off and mortgage refinancing takes place. And finally, while they're not exactly cheap, they've had a pretty big move. We think the commodities are in a kind of longer term secular bull. They've had aggressive movements on the fact that there's just not enough inventory.

Mark Hamlin

I won't talk about individual bonds, but maybe a couple of things. One, if you were to look at the shape of the yield curve, it has steepened a lot in the last 12 to 18 months. And so what that means is that although the Bank of Canada's cut rates in the short end, there's still a decent amount of yield to be gotten in the long end. So we like the long end of the curve, both in Canada but also in the US. So it's a decent investment opportunity there. And we're also aware that there's been some weakness in the Canadian economy. And so we're focusing on sectors maybe where it's a little bit safer. So you can think of consumers. They might pull back on a holiday or something like that, but they're not gonna pull back on groceries. So we like that sector. They're still gonna pay their rent, their cell phone bills, probably their car payments, their electricity bills. So we're kind of skewing some of our corporate holdings to what we call non-discretionary. If you pull back on things, you're gonna pull back on the discretionary spending that you don't have to do, but you're still gonna spend your paycheck every month and there are still things that you're gonna buy and so there are still real opportunities there.

Lisa Conroy

We are positive on natural gas. Rockpoint Gas Storage is one new publicly traded company. They IPO-ed in the fourth quarter. It's a a fantastic play on natural gas storage, which is increasingly becoming a critical part of our energy and power generation. And it's led to storage, which is an area that requires, you know, long-term builds and it's tough regulations to get in. So there's a moat around their business. And over the last three years we've seen prices triple and we expect that pricing power to continue and really excited for this differentiated growth story within natural gas and Rockpoint is overweight within the energy sector for us.  

Phil Camporeale, Managing Director, Portfolio Manager, Multi Asset Solutions, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

- I'm really excited about getting people invested this year. We had a great, great run last year of just normalcy and it may not sound like that when you hear the news and whatnot, but last year was an amazing year for diversification and there's no such thing as free lunch. But the closest thing that we tell clients to free lunch is diversification. A globally diversified balanced fund last year delivered 95% of the return of the S&P with half the volatility. So what I'm looking forward to right now is people seeing that and getting out of cash, getting out of their own way, and investing that in globally diversified portfolios.

Sean Geary, Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Acadian Asset Management

- We've seen a broadening of markets out and we are looking ahead and investors are gonna place more emphasis on fundamentals and less on narrow thematics and speculative ideas. In that kind of market, our approach is very well positioned to outperform.

Vince Childers, CFA, Senior-Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Real Assets, Cohen & Steers

- We look at virtually everything in our real asset space. All of our core real asset categories, resource equities, infrastructure, global real estate, and commodities. Pretty much everything we see looks, at worst, neutrally valued to outright attractive relative to, say, what we see in global equities.

Shane Murphy, Senior Portfolio Manager, Head of Manager Selection and Derivatives, Keyridge Asset Management

- This is gonna be the year we sort of find out if AI is gonna deliver the revenue boosts that a lot of very large companies that put huge amounts of R&D into it to deliver. I think we'll start to get a clearer picture by the end of the year just how valuable or not that's going to be. And then, you know, as we look at valuations, there's always nervousness when valuations are high. So you've got very high valuations in the US, other economies which are much cheaper, Europe, China, APAC as well. But often those cheaper valuations need something to happen to allow them to realize the value.

Jyotsana Wadera, Senior Client Portfolio Manager, Putnam Investments

- You are seeing an easing of interest rates. Now a lot of global economies have already declined interest rates much faster than the US has. The market is already priced in at least two, there may be three. So you have that as a backdrop. You also have a favourable regulatory environment that is going to help a lot of companies. You have better taxation if the new bill does work as it's expected to work. This is gonna help small and mid-cap companies and these are all really nice tailwinds for US equities.

Phil Camporeale

- Last year, the top two performing asset classes were emerging markets and EFA developed non-US. So we're actually taking a really diversified approach to our over weight to equity. It's not just the US anymore. So we're over weight the US, we're over weight international developed markets, and we're over weight emerging markets. Now I think one of the big reasons for that is the fundamental global growth story that we think remains very, very resilient. The US very, very low probability of recession, only 15% probability of recession, leaning to double digit earnings growth. We think some of the fiscal plans, particularly with Germany that got announced last year in Europe, we think is gonna help there. Japan is reflating. That is something we haven't been able to talk about in a long time. Japan's one of our favourite markets structurally over the next decade and we continue to be over weight there. And I think just the US dollar behaving, US dollar last year had its worst year since 1973. We don't expect that to happen again, but we do believe that the US dollar behaving will help non-US asset classes, but particularly the emerging markets and we're a little under weight core bonds and would rather be in diversified forms of credit. We still like the tech trade. I think the tech trade in the US remains really durable. I think those earnings remain really durable. We expect some broadening out into places like financials, but the tech trade I think still remains one of our high conviction views.

Sean Geary

- Our process today is very focused on dividend paying companies that we believe are attractively valued with solid earnings as well as very strong, high quality balance sheets. Market sentiment is very supportive as that broadens out. And from a sector standpoint, we've been leaning into cyclical opportunities while remaining under weight more defensive areas of the market, our increased exposure to banks reflects a combination of strong earnings momentum, attractive dividend yields, and positive market support.

Vince Childers

- To go back to real estate, take something like senior housing, you know, that we are living in a world where there hasn't been a lot of building in recent years. And so you've got a sort of a tighter supply picture and what do we have on the other side of it is an 80 plus demographic that just continues to grow like wildfire. You put those two things together and we're gonna be very constructive senior housing. To infrastructure and the power story, we think natural gas transportation, basically midstream pipelines and gas pipelines are something that, you know, we're gonna be filling those pipes, let's say, to meet a lot of this demand. And so, you know, you're gonna look and say, "Well, Williams, TC Energy, names like that can be found in this portfolio to exploit some of those themes." And in resource equities, I think just the demand for metals that we're seeing and not just precious metals, right, industrial metals, critical minerals, uranium. If we start thinking about the nuclear theme that's out there, that sort of ties into meeting power demand. Cameco, Denison Mines, these are names that we think make sense.

Shane Murphy

- I'd say we're cautiously optimistic. So we've a little bit of a positive equity position, but we're not using the full risk budget. You know, there's a lot of tailwinds there I think that can support equities into 2026, stimulus to the US economy, strong consumer environment there still, and possibly the promise of declining interest rates. And then against that, you've gotta consider those expensive valuations, threat of AI disappointment, and then, you know, a lot of geopolitical risk.

Jyotsana Wadera

- And the strategy is done very well, you know, given the growth exposure that it has. So it's had some of the Mag Seven, so the strategy has benefited from some of that exposure. But we are excited about the fact of moving beyond just the Mag Seven and being able to add value for clients in the portfolio. And we see that through industrials, through healthcare names and consumer names. And don't get me wrong, we're still really excited about the AI supercycle. It is gonna be very transformative to the US and global economy. And we know that in our space, you know, that's where you get that exposure, technology, comm services, industrials make up over 70%.