Monthly Mutuals Analysis
Dateline: 01/20/00
Canadian equity mutual funds have been in the doldrums for over a year, but now are starting to turn around. When we first started charting our monthly Power Performers lists of funds doing better than 20% annual compounded return over each of one, two, three and five year periods in September 1997, there was a strong representation of Canadian equity funds. In fact, of the 24 funds for August 1997, half were Canadian equity funds.
By June 1998, the number had dwindled to two and a month later there were none. Because the Power Performer list no longer supplied any useful leads on funds people might want to include in their RRSPs, we started our RRSP Performers list, lowering the standard from 20% to 15% for RRSP eligible funds. How embarrassing that our market couldn't keep up with our good neighbours to the south!
Finally in January of 1999, one Candian equity fund squeaked into our Power Performers list, but then disappeared with no more showing up until November with one fund. But that was November!
The numbers are in for December and there are now 9 RRSP eligible funds in our Power Performers list, two of them Super Power Perfomers. All are equity funds. The strong performance of the Canadian stock market in the last six months, with the TSE outperforming the Dow, has started to generate results for Canadian equity fund investors.
In fact, the surging market has produced a surge in the number of Power Performers overall. December produced 53, up from 32 in November. Not only that, 23 of them were Super Power Performers - funds generating annual compound returns of over 25% for each of the one, two, three and five year periods.
Looking at the Top One Month Perfomers as listed at the Vancouver Sun site, we see that four Canadian equity funds, Transamerica Agent Plan, Transamerica Growsafe Canadian Equity and the Acker Finley QSA Canadian Equity Series 1 and 2, made the grade, the first time we've seen Canadian equity funds in the top one month performance listings in over a year and a half.
As usual we put together an RRSP Performers chart for December and it had 28 funds, up from a mere 9 in November.
The rationale for doing an RRSP Performers list has died since there are now enough RRSP eligible Power Performers to choose from, so this will be the last one until the number dwindles again. We are also discontinuing posting the ten year, fifteen year and 3 month performance charts as they are readily available elsewhere. We'll be focusing on our Power Perfoemrs in our analysis as it is unique and different than other analyses and exclusive to Investing: Canada.
Comments? Suggestions? Why not post them on our Bulletin Board or email me.
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Mutual Fund Database of Key Links - Relatively new to this site, our database provides targeted links to GLOBEfund, the Fund Library, Portfolio Analytics, Sedar and, of course, the company's homepage for the over fifty mutual fund companies listed.
Recent Fund Articles - The latest fund articles from the Globe & Mail.
Mutual Fund Links - Our own collection of mutual fund links.
Mutual Fund Companies - An extensive collection of links to mutual fund company homepages.
The Fund Counsel - Levi Folk and Richard Webb are two highly respected mutual fund analysts. Their site is definitely worth checking out.
Marco's Power Performers Index Page
Marco's Power Performers to December 31, 1999
Marco's RRSP Performers to December 31, 1999
Note: The author is a financial journalist and not a professional investment advisor. Information contained here should not be construed as investment advice.