All told, 2024 was a good year for the clients of Mirador.  For the basic results numbers of the Canadian unit trust see the January 6th blog post on the Mirador website by holding control and clicking here: Your Future Funded – The Mirador Income and Stability Fund.  What’s most important is that after paying a bonus distribution in December, your total 2024 distribution yield was 9%, the total 2024 return was over 16%, and for 2025 we have once again set the distribution level at 7.5%.  This is a 6.78% increase in the dollar value distribution over the 2024 distribution, not including the bonus distribution.

The end of 2024 was very challenging for investing in Canada.  We did our best to hold on to the wonderful results produced between November of 2023 and November of 2024.  But in December, Canada finally came to face the economic and business challenges created by the government which has not been business friendly for quite some time.  And then the Trump win compounded the damaged created by our own government. 

Frankly, I am reluctant to say much about expectations for 2025.  It is not at all predicable.  By saying much, I risk leading people astray and making an idiot out of myself.  Just yesterday I was reviewing the headlines from five different sources.  Each reported opposing news / reports / opinions.  And even within each of the five publications the headlines and reports changed considerably from day to day.  So putting out some sort of predictions is futile. 

It is a good time to remember the great economist John Maynard Keynes and his beauty contest analogy.  It is not whom I think should win the contest that matters, but the votes of the contest judges are what matters.  In our situation as the portfolio manager for you, the judges are the large institutional investors.  They will vote with their buy and sells using their massive capital base and the imbalance of buying and selling is what will move the prices and determine the winners and losers.  Mirador must be extra vigilant at this time to monitor these price changes and market moves continuously and then ensure the Mirador Income and Stability programs are positioned appropriately for the price action.

Trump is unpredictable.  Canada has no government or leadership.  What else can we do?  Nothing.  Just watch and observe and actively optimize the holding for what is happening to ensure our high income and comfortable stability.

Despite my above expression of futility for predicting, the prices seeming to be showing two things currently.  Firstly, strong U.S. stock prices tell us that U.S. businesses will do well the next while.  When U.S. businesses do well, Canada often gets taken along for a good ride.  But in today’s situation, maybe Trump will do some things that keep the success in the U.S.  Therefore, I recently made a major move to increase our U.S. market exposure.   One main challenge in doing this is to keep our income levels high because U.S. dividend yields are much lower than Canadian.  To help keep our income up, I focussed on ETFs based on U.S. stocks that do covered call writing to enhance the income.  A second challenge is currency.  The Canadian dollar has already corrected significantly due to our own political issues.  But Trump may or may not make this worse.  If the Canadian dollar recovers, it could reduce or eliminate the profitability of our U.S. equity exposure.  For this reason, I selected currency hedged ETFs.  Secondly, gold and precious metals have been strong and our current allocation to this sector is the most it has ever been.  

Here is the current allocation for the Mirador Income and Stability programs: