2015 was a disappointing year for many Canadian investors, against a background of tumbling commodity prices, worries about Chinese economic growth and the expectation of higher interest rates in the U.S. Norman Raschkowan, senior partner at Sage Road Advisors in Toronto, told Financial Pipeline co-editor Malcolm Morrison that investors will find that the same challenges will also confront investors in 2016.
NR: Well Malcolm, is 2016 going to be much like 2015? I think in many ways it is. You know, 2015 was characterized by a lot of disappointments for investors in terms of the type of returns they earned, disappointments in terms of global growth and in particular, disappointments in how world commodity prices ended up. I think many of the factors that contributed to this very sluggish environment are going to persist into the New Year. I think growth is going to remain slow in Europe and in Asia, you’re still going to have China struggling to get its economic engine started again. I think Western Canada is still going to be struggling with weak commodity prices, but that being said, a lot of the adjustments have been taking place over the last 12 months and so in many respects, if you look out a little bit further, things are not that bad. So I don’t think you’re looking at any sort of negative crisis type environments, it’s just going to be one of those sluggish years where you have to work for every basis point of return you earn.
