Sionna believes market pricing is as much about human excess as it is about underlying security fundamentals. One feature of human weakness is that current market trends are often erroneously interpreted as the new secular normal. In reality, these trends are likely cyclical phenomena, which are so infrequent that present decision makers are unaware of their cyclical nature.
Kim Shannon and other industry experts answer the question, "what is your most important piece of investment advice for the second half of this year?"
It has never been easier to spread a message to the masses. Turn on the television and chances are you will find “facts” being scrutinized, so much so that consumers are willing to pay for high-quality, investigative journalism. Sionna is familiar with the investigative process as we have always felt the need to dig beneath the surface when looking for investment ideas. One topic we have been investigating recently is the robustness of the price-to-sales ratio (“P/S ratio”) as a tool to unearth investment ideas.
Zion joined Sionna in 2018 as Associate, Performance and Analytics. He has a number of years of experience in the industry, most recently as a Senior Performance Analyst at Sentry Investments. Zion earned his Bachelor of Arts, with a major in economics from the University of Waterloo, holds the Chartered Investment Manager (CIM®) designation and successfully passed Level I of the CFA Program.
Kim Shannon
President & Co-Chief Investment Officer
Kim Shannon
President and Co-Chief Investment Officer
Over the years, we have watched the annual Gartner Hype Cycle forecasts with interest. For those that are not familiar with it, the Gartner Hype Cycle outlines extreme peaks and troughs that can occur with new technology trends. It demonstrates how hype can build and eventually collapse under the weight of over-inflated expectations, until finally the collective wisdom settles into a more balanced reality about the growth of a new product or concept.
As the hype for the new and novel seemed to gather steam this fall, we developed our own “cheeky” version – the Sionna Hype Cycle of Investment Products – in tribute to Gartner’s innovation.
Walk into Sionna Investment Managers’ downtown Toronto office, and you’ll notice how diverse its investment team is. At Sionna, gender, race and religion are no barrier to career opportunities. What matters to this successful firm – now in its 15th year – is finding the most talented and capable investment professionals to grow its clients’ portfolios.
The idea that practice improves performance is widely accepted, but it’s important to recognize that not just any practice enhances abilities. The act of doing the same thing over and over again may not necessarily lead to improvement beyond a certain point. Instead, a different type of practice, carried out over a sufficient period of time, is what can lead to improvement. So what, then, is the right sort of practice?
There is quite a bit of enthusiasm surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential to replace traditional stock picking. But, enthusiasm and hype of a new concept is common in market history. Humans love forecasting extremes – bland forecasts are boring and not worth talking about. Historically, market players fall prey to hype and assume adoption and acceptance of a new initiative will occur much more rapidly than it actually does.