Investors drove Canada’s benchmark stock index on Tuesday to its highest close since September 2008, but that does not mean all successful Howe Street moneymen are viewing the future with rose-coloured glasses.
Sure, they liked seeing the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) rise 171.87 points to 13,365.15 – a 1.3% gain from Monday, a 15.6% gain from this date last year and a 62% increase compared to this time in 2008.
“I don’t think we’ve cured all the problems in the world by any means,” Canaccord Financial Inc. (TSX:CF) chair Peter Brown told Business in Vancouver.
“The credit problems are still there and are pretty severe, but things are improving slowly. In the U.S. things look a little better. My biggest worry is the credit problems.”
Those problems won’t keep stock markets from what Brown believes will be “long, slow growth.”
Brown and a partner bought what became Canaccord for $23,000 in 1968. He then guided the Vancouver-based investment brokerage company’s growth to $577 million in revenue in the year that ended March 31.
Brown sounded more bullish on stocks than he is on real estate.
“Real estate as a class is dependent on credit and the credit markets are still in terrible shape,” he said.
“The only thing I would say about the [stock] market is to be heavily weighted to resources.”