Year: 2015

IGM Financial Inc.

Hamilton

IGM feb 17 2015

This blog has, for some odd reason, never looked at IGM. It is a mutual fund selling operation consisting of Investor Group, Mackenzie and some planning counselling outfit. It is your very basic and elementary “investment dealer” that embraces the keep-it-simple approach wholeheartedly. It is your mom and pop , knock on doors , type of operation that has done surprisingly well over time. This, paradoxically, may be the case because of the low level of sophistication of the investing public in general and their clients in particular. Their fees are not simple and quite high.

      Analysts rate this stock unanimously as a “buy”. Needless to say, I do not. The EW pattern is perfectly clear with an extended 5th wave into the top, followed by a first wave downAngel, and then the ubiquitous B back up right into the double top level. From there the C has started but has a lot further to go. The 4th wave of previous degree is always a good potential focus point for determining a potential target. Nothing says that it has to stop there.

     If you happen to be in this business you may just want to make hay while the sun shines. This chart starts in 1987 which is roughly where the first mutual funds were introduced. I do not know if it was the first but the Horizon fund was definitely right up there. It was sold with a DSC of 9% and, I believe, a 7 or 8 year period  to be free of a claw-back. A broker with assets under management (AUM) of just one million could generate ( in those days) an income of $100,000 just churning the book. So in this chart you essentially see the entire history of the Canadian mutual fund industry. A lot has already changed but much more will have to be changed to get to world standards.

STN, Stantec.

Hamilton

stn feb 15 2015 b

Never knew what these fellows do for a living! Apparently they are design engineers doing all sorts of projects. They are located at the top of the Don Valley Parkway.

You can see here that the stock obeyed the 15-year channel by stopping right on the line. Ever wonder how it knows the line is there? Well it does not , but every Tom, Dick and Harry and their brothers that have the faintest acquaintance with “technical analysis” and have received a ruler from their employer plus an in house training programme on how to use it, draw that line a thousand times a day in order to determine if they are there yet.

In more detail;

stn feb 15 2015 mstn feb 15 2015 s

It would seem that the big correction has begun. (the best alternative is that the first 5-waves down was not wave 1 but wave A, even then the potential is towards $20). Wave 2 is nearing completion in this cluster of targets, c=a, 62% and the moving average. $33.58 embraces two of those so that is where this stock should be shorted. Normal targets, according to EW rules and guidelines, are at the 4th wave of previous degree, about $8.

The 1% Club.

Hamilton

Value line feb 15 2015Russell 2000 feb 15 2015ftse feb 15 2015

smi feb 15 2015mib feb 15 2015IBEX feb 15 2015

This is not intended as an exhaustive list of different indices , nor is the exercise without creative license , but hopefully the point will be made. That point is that there was never a time in history that so many Central Bankers did so much, for so few, with so little result.

  It will soon be March so I have simple taken the high point (about) a year ago and drew a horizontal line through the chart from there. We have – in the normal reading order – the Value Line (geometric and equal weighted) and the Russell 2000 representing the US broad markets. Then the Footsie to complete the Anglo-Saxons. Next is the Swiss index known for a lot of good and bad things but recently best remembered for 180 degree policy turns. Then comes Italy which was thought to follow the Costa Concordia’s footsteps but somehow has managed not to do so. Spain, always a bit of a basket case, managed to hold its ground.

    All six are , or will be, within 1% of where they were a year ago! The Central Bankers keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. That is insanity. What they should understand is that the mood is what counts. When you keep saying that things are so bad that you have to keep rates low for another few years the mood is ruined. Instead they should raise rates and the mood will improve and with it the economy.