TORONTO: As the global economy picks up speed, investors are dusting off the Canada playbook.
Covid-19 vaccinations are gaining momentum and fiscal support is helping the growth outlook, lifting bond yields. That’s a winning set of conditions for the nation’s value-oriented and cyclical stock market, which is outrunning its US counterpart in 2021 after years of lagging performance.
“Canada has what you want” in the current landscape, said Mike Archibald, vice-president and portfolio manager at AGF Investments, a unit of Toronto-based AGF Management Ltd, which has C$39.8bil (US$31.6bil or RM130bil) in assets under management.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index has trailed the S&P 500 nine of the past 10 calendar years but is beating the US benchmark in 2021 with a 7.6% gain. That’s largely because of banks, which are producing a gusher of profits, and energy and industrial companies that are riding economic tailwinds.
...