Investment Club Meeting on May 27, 2025 (Webinar)
Ellen's Investment Club (Toronto Central Investment Share Club)
Guest Speaker Session
May 27, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M
By videoconference
1) Are you investing primarily in individual stocks? Most club members seem to use a strategy of buying and holding shares as long as they continue to see the metrics they’re looking for – rising revenues, higher net profit and earnings per share (EPS), annual dividend growth, reasonable debt levels and enough free cash flow to stay afloat in bad times.
But despite the eye-popping numbers that hot companies post quarterly, and despite explosive excitement among business journalists, we have to remember that great stocks often stumble. Not everything going on behind the scenes is reported in the media.
Secrets may be kept for years, such as TD Bank’s hiccups in its major expansion to the United States and not training staff well enough in avoiding money launderers – resulting in a $3 billion (U.S.) fine after pleading guilty to multiple charges.
I’ve lined up a guest speaker who has spent 20 years working with large banks to promote exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an alternative to stock picking or buying overpriced and under-performing mutual funds from an investment dealer.
Trevor Cummings started his ETF career in 2005 as vice-president of iShares ETFs, owned by BlackRock. He stayed until 2014, when he moved to RBC Global Asset Management to become V-P and head of business development until 2019. Then he spent one year as director of RBC iShares ETFs after RBC set up an alliance with BlackRock. And since 2020, Trevor has been V-P of ETF distribution in Central Canada for TD Asset Management. A secret: You won’t find TD on the list of top 10 ETF distributors with the highest assets under management.
Here are the key points that Trevor and Isabela Sagan, a TD associate, plan to address.
But despite the eye-popping numbers that hot companies post quarterly, and despite explosive excitement among business journalists, we have to remember that great stocks often stumble. Not everything going on behind the scenes is reported in the media.
Secrets may be kept for years, such as TD Bank’s hiccups in its major expansion to the United States and not training staff well enough in avoiding money launderers – resulting in a $3 billion (U.S.) fine after pleading guilty to multiple charges.
I’ve lined up a guest speaker who has spent 20 years working with large banks to promote exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an alternative to stock picking or buying overpriced and under-performing mutual funds from an investment dealer.
Trevor Cummings started his ETF career in 2005 as vice-president of iShares ETFs, owned by BlackRock. He stayed until 2014, when he moved to RBC Global Asset Management to become V-P and head of business development until 2019. Then he spent one year as director of RBC iShares ETFs after RBC set up an alliance with BlackRock. And since 2020, Trevor has been V-P of ETF distribution in Central Canada for TD Asset Management. A secret: You won’t find TD on the list of top 10 ETF distributors with the highest assets under management.
Here are the key points that Trevor and Isabela Sagan, a TD associate, plan to address.
• Exchange-traded funds: definitions and salient features.
• The history of ETFs.
• The current ETF industry.
• A study.
• ETF engineering.
• The Wealth Industry in Canada
• The history of ETFs.
• The current ETF industry.
• A study.
• ETF engineering.
• The Wealth Industry in Canada
2) In the second hour, we can talk about investing strategies we may be using in the upcoming months, now that Canada has a new PM and the US President will continue to put economic pressure on us to take over our resources and sovereignty and make us the 51st state.
Buy more stocks? Sell off some stocks and invest in bonds and other fixed-income products? Hold more cash?
In case you plan to change the asset allocation of your portfolio, you might want to read Rob Carrick’s articles about finding the best ETFs for your needs. Here’s a link to his list of top ETF picks, published on May 21.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/df41b4d21dc8e30953dba041b19a5fdd36b3f6c0eecbb54437f85d9413326212/MYTOUBF4VRD5FIXNAG5TR3EBME/
3) Another thing we can discuss is a new book by a former New York Times business reporter, Gardiner Harris. It’s about a U.S. company that has been paying good dividends and has been seen as an innovator in health care products.
It’s called No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, and it’s the subject of a long and damning review in the New Republic magazine on May 12, 2025:
https://newrepublic.com/article/194726/johnson-and-johnson-investigation-crimes-health-care-system
I held JNJ stock for years in my locked in retirement account, but not any more. The main grievance for the author is the fact that the first studies flagged possible dangers in using talcum powder for pediatric use, appeared in 1922. By the early 1960s, researchers had linked asbestos exposure to rising rates of mesothelioma, an aggressive lung and abdominal cancer.
The research became public only in 1968, when the New Yorker published an investigation containing data that half of New Yorkers had asbestos in their lungs.
“Tylenol is Johnson & Johnson’s second-most iconic product,” the article says. “And like baby powder, its ubiquity obscures decades of deceitful and ultimately deadly marketing. Years after Tylenol was released over the counter, research revealed the drug’s toxic effects on the liver.”
If you liked Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which exposed the greed that led the family-owned business to hide the fact that the painkiller drug OxyContin was addictive for several decades.
Buy more stocks? Sell off some stocks and invest in bonds and other fixed-income products? Hold more cash?
In case you plan to change the asset allocation of your portfolio, you might want to read Rob Carrick’s articles about finding the best ETFs for your needs. Here’s a link to his list of top ETF picks, published on May 21.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/df41b4d21dc8e30953dba041b19a5fdd36b3f6c0eecbb54437f85d9413326212/MYTOUBF4VRD5FIXNAG5TR3EBME/
3) Another thing we can discuss is a new book by a former New York Times business reporter, Gardiner Harris. It’s about a U.S. company that has been paying good dividends and has been seen as an innovator in health care products.
It’s called No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, and it’s the subject of a long and damning review in the New Republic magazine on May 12, 2025:
https://newrepublic.com/article/194726/johnson-and-johnson-investigation-crimes-health-care-system
I held JNJ stock for years in my locked in retirement account, but not any more. The main grievance for the author is the fact that the first studies flagged possible dangers in using talcum powder for pediatric use, appeared in 1922. By the early 1960s, researchers had linked asbestos exposure to rising rates of mesothelioma, an aggressive lung and abdominal cancer.
The research became public only in 1968, when the New Yorker published an investigation containing data that half of New Yorkers had asbestos in their lungs.
“Tylenol is Johnson & Johnson’s second-most iconic product,” the article says. “And like baby powder, its ubiquity obscures decades of deceitful and ultimately deadly marketing. Years after Tylenol was released over the counter, research revealed the drug’s toxic effects on the liver.”
If you liked Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which exposed the greed that led the family-owned business to hide the fact that the painkiller drug OxyContin was addictive for several decades.
Comments
Post a Comment