Last quarter we wrote about the volatility in the markets in the early part of the year. While a little more subdued, that theme has continued in the second quarter and for most of the same reasons; tariffs, the continued concentration of power in the office of the President and the deficit spending in the U.S. and here. Domestically, we have a new Prime Minister within the same ruling party and some tough talk on fighting for Canada, but little actual action yet.
In this type of situation, it seems almost inconceivable that companies are able to plan for growth. How does one make a major investment in any productive endeavour without knowing, with any reasonable degree of certainty, what the environment will look like in six months let alone 3, 4 or 5 years.
Despite these circumstances, all three major indices (the Dow Jones Industrial Average, The S&P500 and the TSX) were up in the quarter, gains have swung back to growth stocks. Companies like NVIDIA and Microsoft have done well as have most of the companies with AI products and/or cryptocurrencies. Meme stocks have also had a resurgence. Bitcoin, for example, was up over 25% in the quarter. Unfortunately, we don’t invest in Bitcoin and value stocks didn’t fare as well, but we still ended the quarter up by 1.7%. After the losses in the first quarter, we have small (0.7%) gain for the year to date.
Sir John Templeton said “Investors are the people who buy for fundamental values. Speculators are those who buy in the hope of selling later to someone else at high prices.”
It seems that there are a lot of speculators in the market at the moment.