Nugwa: Welcome everyone and thank you so much for joining us today I'm your host Nugwa Haruna. If you've been shopping recently chances are you've experienced The Sting of high inflation. So many goods and services have become noticeably more expensive since the global pandemic. You have things like gasoline, groceries, electronics and this is just to name a few. In fact Canada's Consumer Price Index which ranks inflation for a wide range of goods and services rose by 6.9% year over year in April 2022. That's the sharpest move or increase in more than 30 years according to data from stats Canada. We know that high inflation can take a bite out of our spending money but what does it mean for our portfolio and what can we do about it. Well we're going to get some perspective from a do-it-yourself investor who's been writing about the markets for over a decade. Mark Seed is the founder and editor of my own advisor personal finance and investing blog for Canadians. Mark great to see you in thanks for taking the time to chat today.
Mark: Yes well thanks for reaching out and it's a real pleasure to be here and I can't wait to to get into our conversation it's an important topic for a lot of Canadians.
Nugwa: Right, so now before we dive into our conversation I have a trivia question for our audience and the question goes the S&P TSX Composite tracks the performance of a wide range of Canadian stocks. How has it historically performed during periods when annualized inflation is 4% or higher? So we'll review the answer at the end of our conversation so stay tuned for that. Mark we're going to jump into our conversation because we want to get to know you a little better. You've been blogging for over a decade at My Own Advisor. What gave you the inspiration to turn yourself directed investing experience into a passion project?
Mark: Yeah it's absolutely a passion project and I still enjoy it, you know, looking at uh 12,13 years later now. You know to be honest my own advisor was born out of the desire to better manage my money. I wanted to understand where my money was going. I wanted to understand, you know, coming out of the great financial crisis, you know, 08-09 which which hurt a lot of investors quite hard. I want to understand what the value I was getting for some of the the products or the fees I was paying and truly what I recognized and again I think all of us know this all along is that nobody cares more about your money than you do so I took it to heart and I really tried to understand how fees could potentially impact my portfolio. Is there a better way to potentially invest my money and keep on top of my money and so I started My Own Advisor kind of as most blogs really do as a personal finance diary, an online diary about chronically my journey to financial Independence and that's sharing my my pitfalls and and and my weaknesses but it's also trying to you know broadcast some of my strengths and where I've actually learned to take better control of my money. So it is a bit of a labor of love and I still enjoy it all these years later but certainly I'm hoping to pay it forward through the site and I'm hoping to help help other Canadians as much as I can through my own story.
Nugwa: And congratulations! you're coming up on an important investing Milestone. You'll soon reach your financial independence goals so what do you have planned for semi-retirement?
Mark: Yeah, I mean hopefully not going to travel, that would be nice with the pandemic being a little bit more endemic now but I actually just want to spend more time doing some of the things that I that I haven't been doing whether it's travel whether it's, maybe getting into better physical fitness, as you can see from my background I really enjoy golf and I'm passionate about that so I'd love to play a little bit more golf. I'd also like to try some new things you know there's long laundry list of things I really want to accomplish and I and I feel that this Financial Independence work on your own terms kind of this five loop moniker that I have, it really appeals to me because I think I'll be able to meld a balance of, you know part-time work or sending retirement work, keeping my mind and body active in the workforce but at the same time having a little bit more time to do these passion projects are things that maybe I've put off for a little while. So super excited about the next few years I had with my wife but certainly we got a little bit more to go but, yeah the journey's been super rewarding and I can't I wait to figure out what's next to be honest.
Nugwa: okay, so, before we get into how you're dealing with high inflation can you tell us how would you describe your investing style and strategy?
Mark: Yeah! I've coined myself as a bit of a hybrid investor. I invest in some dividend-paying stocks for income and capital appreciation but I also really enjoy and try to be as passive as I possibly can. Be in the broad markets whether that's Canada, U.S. or International, so I'm really trying to take a bit of a lazy approach with part of my portfolio where part of my portfolio is maybe potentially a little bit more active through those dividend-paying stocks. I certainly don't trade very much um I I kind of call it a Buy and Hold some more approach so I tend to invest in, you know, sectors or companies that I feel quite resilient whether they're in Canada or the US and the dividend portfolio that I have is is quite passive in that I don't actually touch it very often and like I said if anything I just buy more "when things go on sale". So that's been My Philosophy.
Nugwa: Now, the inflation that we've seen in the the first half of 2022 can impact your retirement plans as it can for all of us but some investors aren't really clear on exactly how. So how would you describe the effects of persistently High inflation and the impact it can have on a portfolio?
Mark: Yeah, I mean, let's start with cash, right, so if your savings account is only getting; I wouldn't call it a high interest savings account let's call it a modest interest savings account so if your savings account is getting 1% or 2%, you can kind of see that inflation's slowly eating away at that two percent and reducing that purchasing power so that's one thing to consider I think we we know the inverse relationship of of interest rates and bonds right so interest rates go up and and they have a negative correlation to Bonds in some cases historically you know we have seen these Peaks and Valleys where inflation does spike and level off and Spike and level off so when it comes to, you know, and we'll talk about a little bit more managing your portfolio I think you need to be prepared that these spikes and Peaks and Valleys will exist and you need to kind of hedge your portfolio that certain asset classes may perform better and, or, you just need to be diversified and prepared that these spikes and valleys will happen and and that fits into your long-term game plan. So, again it's just to be mindful that these are cycles and the markets are actually doing what the markets should do which is they go up and down and this is nothing to be overly scared about or fear for long. The reality is that the markets have been doing this for for decades and generations and they'll probably continue to do this for decades and generations and it's really that behavior without emotional fortitude that you need to have to be a little bit resilient and just understand that this is just history playing out again and again.
Nugwa: Now, when we're talking about asset classes that may have responded more negatively historically to high inflation can you discuss some of those?
Mark: Yeah! I would say that the worst performing assets tend to be ones that deliver kind of, you know, lower returns and generally speaking, so let's go back to the conversation about cash and bonds. You know, certainly higher inflation can be a major headwind for cash just because interest rates have to be quite high to combat that and we're seeing interest rates go up bonds tend to get hit fairly hard just because it's - think of bonds as like a big IOU and and that IOU is not paid out in terms of its interest rates very highly and certainly when it when inflation hits that becomes a headwind. Tech sectors or any sectors that rely heavily on growth oriented are tend to be, tend to be very challenging sectors to be in in a in a headwinds that have high inflation or maybe even higher interest rates and that's kind of what I think we're seeing playing a little bit right now.
Nugwa: So which asset classes have historically been most shielded from the impact of high inflation over the long term?
Mark: I do like materials, I do like commodities, I also like energy to a degree we've seen oil again going back to the cycle conversation. You see these these Market Cycles kind of go through Peaks and Valleys. You see maybe oil prices spike and then what happens is potentially, not saying, it's going to ever happen consistently but maybe some sort of recession or bearish territory. I'm also a fan of Utilities and Financials to a degree so I'm thinking about some of these sectors a little bit of Utilities for the stable income they provide because they can they can transfer their costs. As an investor to me, through their dividends or through their rising prices. So those are some of the sectors I looked at. There's also Healthcare that folks may want to look at but again that's much more of a growth story potentially so there could be some headwinds in that sector as well and then there's Consumer Staples some of those Consumer Staples um stocks whether they're in Canada or the U.S. they can also pass some of their costs onto the consumer so it's something to be mindful of and you know in thinking about kind of as a DIY investor potentially consider you know uh owning what you buy right so if you're a consumer of certain Telco services or you're a consumer of certain utility services or other these are things that that generally, some people most of us can't live without and so they tend to be a bit of an inflationary hedge. It's not to say that they're foolproof things can go up and can go down sometimes quite drastically but the end of the day there are certain types of services or goods that that most of us just can't live without.
Nugwa: Okay, so speaking about hedging, your portfolio gets hit with inflation. There's a lot of debate about the merits of gold and even cryptocurrencies as potential Hedges. Where do you stand on that?
Mark: That's a great question because I've seen so many articles of late about gold or digital gold as some people call it with crypto and such being kind of an inflationary hedge and I I just don't buy it. I think we're in an area where you know years ago, decades ago gold tended to be a a safe haven or gold bullion tend to be a safe just because the retail investor did not have access to, you know, any sort of total Market Funds or ETFs that most investors have right now so I think about all the available assets or or sorry, all the available sectors that most retail investors can get through low-cost ETFs or, you know, directly through a low-cost discount brokerage. I just don't see that, you know, everything that glitters should be related to gold and when it comes to cryptocurrency it's very new asset class it's still very much an alternative asset class. I think people need to consider that the whole part of the alternative asset class is potentially high high risk but also, you know, indiscriminate reward. So personally I'm not a huge fan of gold as an inflation heads and you know I think the jury is still out, certainly long term when it comes to any sort of cryptocurrencies
Nugwa: We talked about some asset classes that have performed relatively well during periods of high inflation and so some investors may be tempted to overweight their portfolio in those asset classes during periods of high inflation and what's your take or what's your stance on that?
Mark: I don't mind, I don't mind being strategic because I think that way too, you know, you can certainly watch some of the news and you can certainly read some of the reports but I would say, you know, if you're going to make some strategic calls on asset classes do it conservatively so you know investors can look at the TSX or they can look at the S&P 500 for hints about sector allocation and and watching the index and seeing how it weights certain asset classes knowing that long-term returns from these, from 100% equities is generally quite favorable. Those can be hints for some folks to start thinking about how much sector allocation should I have and if you're going 10 or 15 or 20 percent beyond that, there's absolutely some reward potential but there's also some risk too and so you need to, you need to keep that in mind as an investor high risk could yield high returns but certainly high risk could yield much damage to your portfolio. So I think it's really good to have diversification that aligns with your risk tolerance and your goals in mind and it's all part of a long-term plan anything that happens in the next six weeks or six months and in some cases six years shouldn't really have much to do with your time Horizons that's 30 or 40 years out. Especially for people in our asset accumulation years like myself.
Nugwa: So that's the importance of having an investment plan because within an investment plan, when you create your investor profile you can look at what the asset allocation would be in there, you talked about the importance of diversification so essentially not putting all your eggs in one basket so members of the audience who want to learn more about building a diversified portfolio can check out our video course managing a portfolio in the Learning Center. Okay, so now Mark many investors are fretting about the impact of high inflation and wondering what to do about it but you're largely sticking to your plan. Why is that?
Mark: I have confidence in it to be honest. I mean, I think, having a plan - I mean plans can change and I'll come back to that point in a second but I think having a plan about how - and what I mean by a plan is not just about investing it's about how I'm paying down my debt, how I'm managing my insurance in case the you know a catastrophic unforeseen thing would happen to myself or my wife. It's about actually enjoying the things that that life provides today whether it's you know the golf course or hopefully travel or those types of things. So to me having a plan is not just about the investing arm it's about a whole bunch of other things as well and so I've devised my plan over many years but to my earlier point it's the process of re-planning that is super important things change and so life changes and so while your plan needs to be resilient it's an opportunity for you to look at your goals, look at your objectives, monitor yourself and and see if you need to tweak anything along the way. So whether that's every six months or whether that's a, you know, a coffee talk around the family table once a year for a little bit. I think it's the process of re-planning that people need to get into a habit. That's really the true power of of of sticking with, you know, kind of a long-term goal in mind that really has true benefits come in.
Nugwa: Right, so, because as you mentioned that plan almost takes away some of that emotional investing that we mentioned earlier right?
Mark: Yeah, you get away from this knee-jerk reaction so, I've tried to train my investing brain. I'll go a little bit, if you will, over the years where I've tried not to react to what's going on in the market whether the TSX index is down a bit or the S&P Index is down a bit and the stock market's funny place because it's one of the places where there's a lot of euphoria when things go up but people get really antsy and fearful and obviously sell stuff when things go down and so nobody in their right mind would go to the grocery store and see you know apples and, you know, some of their favorite dishes on sale and just go oh my gosh I can't be bothered with that but the stock market's a funny place where there's just such an emotional tie to the money and where your money's going. So I think if you can learn to train your investing brain a little bit and and consider these opportunities as means to put a little bit of extra money into the stock market, again align to your long-term plan whatever that's 5, 10, 20 years out I think people are going to be significantly rewarded over time by having the opportunity to buy things relatively speaking, you know, when the prices are down.
Nugwa: So that said, in your opinion what are some tangible steps investors can take within their investment plan to curb the impacts of high inflation?
Mark: I think you need to be mindful - I'm a big fan personally of having a little bit of an emergency fund or, you know, cash wedge where should something unforeseen happen in in my life or our life that if we need the money we're not selling anything any assets to to fund that I would also really look when it comes to inflation, you know, look at your budget and I don't mean budget in a bad way. That you need to be very systematic about you have to spend only this money on these things but it's more around just looking to see if you're getting value for the money that you're spending on whether it's your subscriptions or whether it's you know the the groceries or the day-to-day goods and services that you're buying I think revisiting a little bit of your budget to see where you can cut back is also helpful and then again when it comes to the investing side I think having a little bit of bias to stocks. A little bit more than bonds which is a little bit more than cash and having that long-term discipline mindset is really going to help a lot of Canadians during a very tough time. So I think those are kind of three key things that people can think about to help them curb inflation and hopefully it's a short-term tenure thing. It's maybe over the next one or two years where we're seeing the things run a little hot but again the future is always an uncertain place and we need to be mindful that that plans can change and your plan needs to change with it.
Nugwa: Right, so speaking about plans just a reminder within WebBroker there is the goals tool that investors are able to use to adjust those investment plans as circumstances change. Now Mark, you say you see higher than average inflation continuing for one to two years. So what are some steps you might personally take to adjust your portfolio with that in mind?
Mark: I have been looking at the Energy sector for the last few months and so that's one of the the sectors that I thought, you know, jeepers looks like the Energy sector was starting to take off a little bit in the last few months and so I have been looking at keeping some assets in that sector for sure. I've already mentioned, I do have a fairly good weighting of Utilities and also some Materials and Commodities in my portfolio so I'm looking at that just to make sure it still aligns to my risk tolerance but honestly I'm not doing too much different. I know that these are interesting times and just like in 2021 it seemed like everything was going up, housing was going up, crypto was going up the stock market was going up - inflation wasn't going anywhere and neither were you know interest rates and so, you know, for the longest time it was a bit of an upside down world I call it where everything seemed to be going up and all the money was was fairly cheap to get and access and now things are starting to shift and revert to the mean maybe a little bit. I'm actually not doing too much different but I am looking at some sectors to see if I could, if I could take advantage of some upswings but all those upswings are totally in line with my personal risk tolerance and making sure that any one asset class isn't tipping the apple cart per se.
Nugwa: Okay, so can you share what your asset allocation makeup looks like during periods of high inflation?
Mark: Yeah, now I'm not far off, you know, the TSX60 in Canada so I I tend to use the TSX60 index as kind of my proxy for my own DIY portfolio and I have done so for years. So when I when we break that down and unpack that a little bit more my Financials are hovering around 25% - 30% of my weight. My Energy is probably around 20% or so right now when I think about the Telecommunications or Communications industry I probably have a little bit higher allocation just because the companies I invest in tend to reward shareholders through dividends or capital appreciation probably 5% to 10% there and then basically a lot of the other sectors are a blend between 5% and 10% asset allocation whether you're talking about Commodities some Materials, Tech and so on and so forth, you know, Utilities so I try not to go too much astray from what the index is doing but I do have a bit of a personal bias into having a little bit more Telco and a little bit more Utilities just because I feel some of those companies offer very dependable income. Some of the companies tend to grow their dividends and they also have a little bit of price appreciation over time as well.
Nugwa: All right! So what do you think about dollar- cost-averaging investing versus lump sum investing during periods of high inflation?
Mark: Yeah, this is a really interesting question because lump some investing tends to be better because you get your money working in the market faster and that allows time to compound. The reality is we're all creatures of habit and we all have emotions with the money and so if you need to do the dollar-cost-averaging whether it's high inflation or low inflation, high interest rates or low inflation rates that's okay stick to a program where you can invest maybe a little bit every month or every quarter and just kind of keep doing it rinse and repeating. So I don't have a a firm answer on that. Lump sum investing tends to be better but honestly we're human beings and we're flawed and if it helps us sleep better at night to do the DCA - the dollar-cost-averaging go for it
Nugwa: Right, so we had talked earlier about your timeline for semi-retirement but with this high volt of inflation, has that forced you to reconsider your timeline at all?
Mark: Not really, not yet, you know, my wife and I are fortunate enough to be, I think saving well and trying to live within our means or try to live below our means most of the time if not all the time and so I've tried to design my plan around the fact that semi-retirement may be a couple years away I absolutely want to stay, you know, working and be, you know, contributing where I can but I just want a little bit more of my time back if you will. So I think that's something I'm looking forward to. So, yeah to answer your question I think the timeline for semi-retirement in the next two to three years hasn't changed at all I'm absolutely looking forward to it I can't wait and I think; I've designed my my financial planner at least my investing plan in particular around, you know, poor markets, bad sequence of returns and so on and so forth. I obviously hope things will rebound but my plan is is hopefully a bit of all weather and a little bit weatherproof to withstand some downside risk in the coming years as well and keep my, keep our objectives kind of on track as well so it's a good news story - so far so good but I'm happy to come back and talk more about it if and when things change of course.
Nugwa: Thank you so much for sharing your perspective and we're not done yet, we're going to transition into live question in a moment. But first, I want to introduce everyone to the asset allocation tool in WebBroker which can help you track your exposures to different asset classes. Once in WebBroker, click on Accounts under Account Details click on Asset Allocation. Asset Allocation involves investing in different asset classes such as equities which include Canadian, U.S and international equities. Fixed Income which include Canadian or Global fixed income. Cash and cash equivalents and may include other alternative asset classes such as Commodities and Real Estate. Since different asset classes respond to different market conditions in different ways an investor could manage the risk of investing in the markets through portfolio asset allocation. Now for an investor interested in seeing the performance of each of these asset classes within their portfolio; they're able to do so by scrolling down taking a look at the weight of each asset class within their portfolio as well as the performance of each asset class within their portfolio. For an investor looking to see the historical returns on different investor profiles they're able to do so by using the goals tool. Once in Goals an investor is able to choose a goal on the Second Step an investor is able to compare different investor profiles. For this example we're going to stick with a moderate investor profile. Once here an investor can see what the asset mix as well as the asset breakdown within a moderate Investor's portfolio would be as well as what the historical returns have been in the last 15 years for a portfolio holding this asset mix. What the best year has been. What the worst year has been as well as what the annual average return for this type of portfolio has been in the last 15 years. So that's how the asset allocation tool can help investors keep tabs on the composition of their portfolio no matter the economic conditions. Now just one last thing before we head into our question and answer segment and that's the answer to a trivia question. As a refresher, the question was; The S&P TSX Composite Index tracks the performance of a wide range of Canadian stocks. Hhow has it historically performed during periods when annualized inflation is 4% or higher? And the answer is the S&PTSX Composite Index produced an average annualized return of 2.3% during times when inflation was at least 4% according to a report by analysts at National Bank Financial in 2021. That might not sound like much but that was better than the S&P 500 Index which measures a wide range of U.S stocks it was down an average of 5.9% annually during those periods of high inflation. The analysts say the larger weighting of commodity stocks in the TSX Composite Index is one reason for its out performance and Mark you had talked about, you know, Commodities at as potentially, you know, a sector that may perform relatively well during, you know, high inflation and market volatility right?
Mark: Yeah, absolutely and I think, you know, history can be a good teacher it doesn't mean it's always a straight line to what the future may hold whether it's one year or a few years but the TSX is historically fairly resilient um because of the energy bias because of the, maybe, the tipping and financials but also those commodities and raw materials were resource-rich nation we're very fortunate. I hope it always continues but, you know, in some cases it's okay to have a little bit of money at home and I think we're seeing that play out when it comes to inflation and higher rates so these are just considerations for all investors and I hope, that helps folks make some really good decisions as part of their long-term plan.
Nugwa: All right, so let's head over to a live Q&A Mark and give the audience an opportunity to get their questions answered. Mark: Great stuff
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