S1E10: Income Equities with Jeannine LiChong from Waratah Capital Advisors Ltd.

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This podcast is brought to you by Ginsler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Gensler wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation, and past performance does not guarantee future returns. There will be one instance of the F word in this episode, but actually we only say the letter F. Oops. Now there's two instances. Today on the Gensler Wealth Unlimited podcast, we have my friend Janine Lee Chong, portfolio manager at Waratah Capital Partners. We talk about our first encounters with famed investor Ira Gluskin, the importance of being a good listener, and how Janine invests in challenging times. Let's go. Welcome everybody to the Gensler Wealth Unlimited Podcast, end of September edition, just before Labor Day. So we're sneaking this in before life gets really, really busy. Really happy to have my former colleague, good friend, Janine Lee Chong with us. Portfolio manager of the Income Equity strategy at Waratah Capital Advisors. Janine and I have known each other for almost 20 years. We go back to a previous firm, which we'll talk about in a bit, but it's very special to have her join us today. And just a little bit of background on Janine. She joined Waratah in 2018 after spending 22 years at a previous firm. Keep saying previous firm. Very shortly we will say the name, but you know, we'll keep you in suspense here. At Gluskin Chef, she was executive Vice President, portfolio manager in the Canadian equities area, managing one of their flagship funds or the flagship fund, the Income Equity Fund, over two and a half billion dollars. Member of the management committee, member of the asset mix committee, that fund a period of time we served on together. And she is a trustee of the Toronto Symphony foundation, is a passport member of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and we'll touch on music a bit as well. And Janine received a honors Bachelor of Arts and a Master's of Accounting degree from University of Waterloo and is also a cpa, CA and cfa. And most importantly, just a wonderful person. So thanks Janine for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Thanks Brian, for having me on.

No problem. So before we get into, you know, investing and professional and history and all this stuff, one thing that I did tease out there, I have a guitar, piano, drums, etc. In my basement. I don't think I'm anywhere near the musician that you are or were. So I just Wanted to actually ask you about that right off the bat because I think there's a deep music background here and maybe tell us a little bit about that. And also how does that sort of help you or how do you think it's helped in your day to day life now as a pm so probably.

Like many people in this world, my mother put me in piano lessons when I was a young child, probably to keep me out of trouble and get me from not watching so much TV. So I took piano lessons for probably about 11 years and I did get quite interested on my conservatory exams. I actually have arct and piano performance from the conservative. You know, it's hard to tell how much that influenced me in terms of investing because I think people draw from all sorts of backgrounds in terms of the investment. What I like about it is both the science and art and you've got to incorporate all of that. One of the things I think music had is you have to have good listening skills. You know, as you were a musician, Brian, you'd have good listening skills. So having good listening skills in this business is probably a good thing.

To be clear, I'm a fake musician, you're a real musician, that's okay.

Well, I think when I go to meetings a lot of times people like to talk. And I think you learn more by listening. So certainly music, having a music background, good listening skills. The other thing is for music getting to this level, you have to take theory lessons. So you have to take analysis, you study the actual music. There's patterns and analysis in music that you have to study, particularly when you're memorizing pieces and performance. And I think pattern recognition is also really interesting for investing. Trying to think of situations and what happened, how the stock market reacted. I mean, I don't know dissolving instances. But these are sort of things that probably. I think back of my music education and I remember. So whether it's good or bad, I remember.

Yeah, no, no, I, I, you know, there's been discussing for years, maybe decades, the importance of music and the arts in school. My wife is actually the education expert, not me. But I do think from my experience it, it's a whole different part of the brain that works and operates and creativity and learning and maybe where the language parts of your brain live too. I don't really know, I, you know, I don't know the brain very well, but I just imagine it's, at least for me it's been helpful. Creativity, et cetera, et cetera. So very neat. Okay, so let's Go back to the beginning of your time with Glaskin Chef and our, you know, friend and former colleague, I guess, Ira Glaskin. I've got an interesting story from my intro to Ira and eventually making my way into Glaskin Chef. And so I know my story was slightly interesting. I just wondered what yours was. So do you want me to tell you mine first, or do you want to tell.

Absolutely. Let's hear yours and then I'm happy to share mine.

I wonder if I'd share this with you. I don't know. So. So I was between my first two years at hbs, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for a summer job, and I was introduced to Aira, and I came into the original, or I don't know if it was the original, but the BCE Place, Gluskin Chef offices. Ira agreed to meet with me, which was good. And came into. I can't remember what all the boardrooms were called, but the one near the investment area, what was that one called again?

The investment room. The investment room.

Investment room. Okay, very good. Very creative. And I came in, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I think the room sort of smelled like cigars and there was papers everywhere. And Ira had his feet up on the table and his rainbow socks were there. His trademark, I guess. And we chatted for a bit, and ultimately Ira actually ended up offering me a job in the investment area, which you will know that I didn't show up for because I wasn't quite sure that was what I wanted to do at that moment, was be, you know, the deep. The investment analyst, as you and your team have done for years. And so I didn't come to Gluskin between my two years at hbs, but a number of years later got sort of reintroduced to Aira, and he quickly realized I should be talking to his partner, Jerry and Jeremy Friedman, who's actually an advisor to Gensler wealth right now, which is wonderful to work with them on the business side and the client service side. And so I went in. I could. My whole interview with Jerry is a whole podcast episode on its own. So I won't. I won't go into that. But basically, long story short, Jerry and Jeremy hired me. I showed up on day one, and I was in Jeremy's office, still hadn't really seen Ira or thanked him for the intro. And he. He came into Jeremy's office. He had, you know, stacks of paper, because for those who may not know to get an update on what's going on in the portfolio. Throughout the day, he would just print reams and reams of paper of what was going on with all the portfolios in the stocks. But anyways, so he's holding this big stack of paper with him, and I say, ira, I'm here. You know, I'm in Jeremy's office. They hired me. Thank you so much. I really appreciated it. And because this is a children's friendly podcast, I can't say exactly what Ira said, but basically he just looked at me, smacked me on the shoulder with his reams of paper and said, don't f up, and walked out of the office. And that was my welcome to Gluskin Chef by. By Aira. So. And then, you know, went on for a number of years at Glaskin Chef and had had a great time. But, yeah, so given that that was my story, I was interested to hear, you know, how you came about Glaskin Chef and really you trained, I guess, with Aira or by Aira, which has worked out very well, I would say, because you're doing a spectacular job. So what. What's the. What's the story with you?

So I had worked at Canadian Pacific in their investment management pension group, and at the time there was some uncertainty whether they moved to Calgary. And I felt it was time to look for a job, serve in the industry. So, you know, I did what the typical person that has no contacts and no nobody in the business. I sent my resume everywhere, and I did manage to get a few interviews, and one of them was with Glasgow Jeff. So I interviewed with them with a few people, and then the person who brought me in decided that I should meet Ira and Jerry at the same time. And I had no. I had notice of this. So it was just basically the day I came in, because I think Goskin Chef at the time was like 40 people at the time when I started. And so I said, sure, I will come in. So I walked into this office and there was both Jerry and Ira at the same time, and both of them interviewed me at the same time. And you can imagine that can be quite intimidating. So I was quite intimidated. But answer the questions. And at the end of the day, I got a phone call and said, we'd like you to start tomorrow if you can. Right. So that's how I got hired.

Right. And what was it like working for Aira or with Aira and any, you know, you always read in the paper, you want to hear what the. What the secrets are, what's the secrets to being a great investor and making money. And everyone follows Buffett and so on and so forth. Any nuggets, words of wisdom or nuggets of wisdom or experience that Ira imparted to you that you sort of think about on a day to day basis?

Well, first of all, he was a wonderful mentor. I cannot be more lucky to have him teach me about the investment business because I didn't know anything about it. And as a result I stayed 22 years at Goskin Shop which was a wonderful experience for me. He to say nuggets of wisdom would be very difficult because I mean, you know Ira, he's an out of the box thinker. He's unbelievably good at interviewing management teams. He thinks differently from everyone. So I think that's one of the interesting things that I've observed and tried to think about when I do investing. And the other thing I think that's really important is to have basic principles and discipline. The markets can be quite emotional and they can be quite volatile as we're experiencing today. And as long as you have and it could be he doesn't, he would never impose his style on other people. He wants you to develop your own style and have confidence in your style and stick to your discipline. And the fact that he has that latitude and would guide you, you can always go and very approachable, a great listener. So I learned so much from him and I, you know, my investment experience and knowledge has all come from him.

Amazing. Sounds great. So then now let's move on to you and your fund or your strategy that you're running Now I will say both from a regulatory standpoint, but just in general, we do allocate to your existing fund for our listeners to know. I will say it's something that I've been familiar with for years just given that we work together at Glescom Chaff and now following you as you moved over to Waratah. But for those listening, can you just describe the fund, your mandate, what you're trying to achieve and how you, you know, try to do it? I guess so.

The fund is North American Equity with a biased Canada. It's biased long only I would say and the if you the philosophy really it comes from the roots of investing money in high net worth is preservation of capital, minimizing the down draw and participating in the equity upside. So we're not trying to shoot the lights. We're trying to compound year after year return while preserving capital. That's I would say the philosophy of the firm. And we've got different tools that we do it the way the fund set up. We can use options and shorting cash. So it's very eclectic in that way. We're not really benchmarked to an index. We're trying to achieve absolute returns by investing in stocks. We have the flexibility of going up and down the capital structure. So you know, at the moment actually on some debt. But that would be an opportunistic basis. But predominantly I would say think about it in an equity portfolio North American with mostly on a Canadian focus.

Okay. And the name of the fund or in the name is the word income. So I think income is a big piece of it. But maybe talk a little bit about that too. How you think about portfolio construction around the income side as well.

So the income can be in the way deceiving people. Think of it's a fixed income fund. It's not. It's an equity I described the income really comes from the name. And I won't take any credit for it because it was named before I got there is there is a distribution that comes out of the fund 5% optional to the discretion of the holder. When we think about stocks we want to incurred in investing, we really think about it from a absolute total return basis. So capital gains plus dividends or interest or whatever that comes out of it to make up and fund that 5%. My bias when I look at stocks and investing is to invest in cash flowing companies. But you know, companies that actually generate cash flows have many different options. They could reinvest it back in the business. They can buy stock back, they can pay dividends. And I would say that we don't necessarily have a preference for companies that pay dividends, which you would think from an income portfolio.

Right.

My preference actually is if they reinvest it back in the business like the management knows their business. And if they can earn above their cost of capital, reinvest back in the business because that means future cash flows, more cash generation for me as an investor is a positive thing. So we don't have a strict rule that we would only invest in certain companies that pay a certain yield. We look at it in a cash basis. I used to not be. I would say I would share buybacks like it's been sort of thematic in the last couple years. And I would say I was probably more critical of share buybacks because I would say, well, you know, companies have a better source of capital. They're just buying back their stock. It's a way to prop Back that stock. I think I read the book the Outsiders, and I think it's really changed my viewpoint on stock buybacks. And I do think it's an effective tool for shareholder return in the right circumstances.

Right, got it. Okay, good. So I want to dive into the fund a little bit more, talk about some of those tools that you mentioned, the hedging, the options, talk about the cap structure. But before we do that, just a little bit of a sidebar on the income world as well. Because I recall the previous fund at Gluskin Chef, it still is called, it was called the premium income fund. I remember Ira writing articles about income trusts when income trust started to become more popular and a popular structure for companies to use. And I think you and IRA were one of the early sort of investors in these income trust when people might not have understood them. Maybe talk a little bit just about, let's go back in time and what that time period was like with income trust. And then of course there was, I think they call it the Halloween massacre or something, which is when Jim Flaherty basically killed the income trust structure. Seems like a really scary name for, for, for something that happens in the financial world, but little bit of history on that asset class, what it was like being a pioneer investing in that area. And then what do you do when your investment strategy gets thrown a big wrench and you have to deal with it?

Yeah. So I would say you're right. Income trust were was a new structure that came to the market. IRA was very prescient, I would say, in recognizing the attractiveness of it. And initially when it came out, they were smaller cap companies and it was really more of a retail product. So institutional investors were not really investing in it. And hence you didn't see a lot of research, you know, street research written about it. And I remember the early days when I couldn't find research. He would tell me, well, I think you've got to get in your car and go visit the companies and figure it out yourself. So it gave me a solid grounding on how to do fundamental research. So one, that was part of my training and secondly, it was a great experience to go through. And he recognized these are great companies. They're just paying a high yield. It doesn't, doesn't mean that they're bad companies. And I think they were pooh, poohed for a while until they got some institutional recognition. And there were some other institutional investors that were quite big in the time and big players in the time. Towards the end, I would say of the income trust prior to the 2006 change it and regulation, you did see companies come to market as income trusts that were probably not great companies. So to me, you know, it's not the structure necessarily. You're investing, you're investing in the company. And we did not participate, I would say, in the late IPOs, the IPOs that came out sort of later, I felt they were not as good quality. When the change in regulation happened, that was very distinct in my mind because you woke up the next day, Brian, and that whole market was down 11% immediately, there was nothing you could do because the news came out after the market closed and it really tested you in terms of how to think about the investments. What were you going to do? Because immediately you lost 11% of your value in your fund. And the discipline is to go back to principles, think about, go back to basic principles and think about it as a corporation, which it was going to eventually turn into, and what were the ramifications, what were going to happen to the dividend payout, how the company was going to be valued and so on. And that's what we did. So managing or investing a portfolio of income trusts is the same as corporations. It's just a different structure. And you've got to think about the valuation. So, you know, we pivoted from being only income trust, obviously corporates with the cash flow then. So it was a fun time. A lot, a lot of lessons learned.

I think right now I remember that that was, was a little, I don't know, freaked out is the right word. But yeah, big, big change, literally overnight, unbelievable time. Good. Thank you for that. So, so, so maybe talk. You talked a little bit about it already, even in that explanation. But in your existing strategy, what are you doing to find potential investments? What are you looking for? Talk a little bit about due diligence, maybe. I liked when you just described, you know, getting in the car and go seeing companies. You know, when we're meeting with managers here, we really want to go and visit them at their offices and meet their team and see where they're working. I think there's just a completely different level of information you can sort of glean and gather from being there. So I like when you say that. But can you talk about that, what you're looking for, how you find them, due diligence, what makes something attractive for you and for the fund?

So I'm often asked by clients where to get your idea, and it's a hard question to answer because it's almost like a Mosaic. It's like, you know, you're reading the papers and you have an idea. You go to a conference. We talk to clients who are often high net worth clients that run their own businesses. So it's all of those things put together, I would say where we would get our ideas. Obviously we have, you know, we let, we read the research, we talk to brokers and so on. So it's everything put together and you sort of come up with your own ideas. I guess that's part of the art of investing as opposed to science. And then once we figure out either a sector, we'll drill down and figure out which companies are exposed to it. And I'm, I guess I'm an accountant by training, but I actually like going through all the filings and I do read financial statements and all the regulatory filings and you know, we do meet with management teams of every company that we own a couple times a year and we go from there. We really do fundamental work and whether we like it, we take a two to three year outlook. So we know that especially with the markets these days, it could go up or down the next week or so. But that doesn't tend to bother us. I used to be a staunch fundamentalist, very fundamentals of the company and that's what's going to carry through the investment. And I think that's almost a very naive view these days or my early days of investing. It's very hard to ignore macro these days. Macro will impact the market. And I know you've had a many guests in the past, our friend Dave Rosenberg. So Dave Rosenberg also worked at Kluskin Shop and had a view on macro. And I think macro has to be, you know, considered in the investment process, particularly what may influence the sectors I look at, the industries I look at or the weighting of those industries in the portfolio. I'm not a great macro person. I would never consider myself a macro. But you need to consider that macro environment in the sectors you, you invest in. And I think that's sort of come about with more experience in the investment.

I want to dive into some, maybe some individual names in a second. But speaking of macro. So you're part of Waratah. It's a larger firm with manages a bunch of different strategies. You talked a little bit about other tools you have hedging options. I know the team over there is, you know, thinking all the time about the macro world and where to hedge for protecting downside. This and that could eat just talk a little bit of a how you Leverage them. But B, give us a sense of what you're doing practically in the fund for that type of maybe hedging or taking into account the macro environment.

Yeah, sure. So when I joined Mark, I was really pleased to meet all the investment members, team who are very bright, very hardworking, great team to join. I'm very happy. They have a lot of experience on US name and they do some very deep dives. So it's really, you know, Canisra follows the US or has been in influenced by the US So I certainly get a very deep bench in terms of the US and different names, the different sectors, just talking about them. So Brad, who's also a former colleague of ours, obviously started Vorton and is a phenomenal investment mine as well. Having trained with iron, I had the pleasure of working with him both at Gluskin as well. It's a great keen market sense and so I've been able to, you know, just listen and leverage that. And the influence, I wouldn't say it influences the name, it's certainly my decision, but it's part of the knowledge base that I can draw upon in making my investment decisions or how to position myself in the portfolio, which is fantastic. The team also obviously started as hedge funds like Pure Hedge of Market Neutral, so on. So they have deep experience in terms of shorting and how to position and really I wasn't exposed to that prior to coming to Morita and while I don't do it in the fund that I manage, I'm able to use those tools on the edges. So prior to coming to Waratah we did use cash balances quite effectively to minimize downside. But because of the structure of the funds historically I wasn't able to use options or shorting, whereas the way the funds were set up at Waratah, I am. So it's not, I wouldn't say I look at it as a money maker, but it's a way to manage the risk in the portfolio and manage the down draw. It's just other tools that I can use other than cash and having the exposures to other portals that do it in a much deeper way than I do because they're market neutral is a phenomenal part of me. This experience and seeing things and watching people who do it better than you and you learn from that, it's constant learning. So I'm grateful that I have that experience and exposure.

Great. And I think you're being a little bit modest because I actually don't think there are many folks that run a strategy like your type better than you do. So you're doing a fantastic job. So let's dive into maybe a couple names in the portfolio, if you wouldn't mind, if that's okay. And you know, I don't know if you want to talk about the top holding or just something that you recently bought that you're enamored with just to give people a little bit more of that deep dive into your thought process.

Sure. I probably talked about this name in the past. It was a name that I held for a long time. Bought it also when I started at Waratah. And I would say two names in the same sector is a big, fairly large part of the portfolio of top holdings is a company called Intact. And I owned it when it used to be IMG Canada.

Right.

And we recently participated, I think in the IPO or Definity, the old economical that went public a little while ago, but a fairly recent public offering. And I've been following the PNC industry for a while and one of the things I've noticed, which sort of got interrupted by Covid, but I think that the trends are still there, is that we're in a hard market.

What does that mean for people who.

Pricing, there's pricing power, there's pricing strength in premiums and you know, you talk to the everyday person, oh my God, my car insurance, my house insurance, everything, my commercial insurance, everything is off. And what's great is it's in all sectors. It's at all lines of business that they've actually been going up. So I think that the pricing strength has been very good for these companies. Got a little sideline with COVID but still the underlying strength is there. Now people said, well now inflation costs, everything's up. So how are they managing through this? The results just came out. I think they've been managing quite effectively in that the pricing has superseded what they were actually doing in inflation. Cause they're doing a great job. They have economies of scale, they're more vertically integrated and I think that that's helping some of the numbers. Now all insurance companies, life insurance, pnc have somewhat suffered because we've been in a lower interest rate environment for a long time. And if you pull up the results from last quarter, their investment income. So they're great underwriter. These companies, they make money just on managing claims, costs and expenses. But layer on top their ability to actually get money from their investment portfolio, that's just, you know, we haven't seen that in years. So I think the setup in terms of their Business model is very good right now and you can see it even in the US PNC companies as well. For dfinity that came out because it was a mutual company, they actually have no debt on their balance sheet. So their balance sheet's not optimized. So people will look at it and say, well look at the roe, it's very low. But if you adjust it for a more optimized balance sheet, I think that the ROE would be a lot higher, which will explain why the multiple is where it is. So company that I like both fundamentally and I think that the industry where it stands at, it's in a good position right now.

Okay, great. And, and so you make equity investments. Obviously that's the core of the fund is investing in equities, but you can invest in other things. You mentioned you just bought some debt. Are you buying prep shares? Are you buying convertibles? What other things did the fund hold? And maybe what was interesting about this debt, I guess that you just bought or the fund versus equity side.

So we just recently bought them. So I'm sure you saw the banks came out with some paper. I was paying plus 7% yield. And to me, you know, if you'll think about long term returns in the equity markets, it's historically anywhere between what, six, seven, eight kind of in those levels Y so now you're buying, you're going to get debt instrument higher up the capital structure and equities paying a 7% yield. That's to me looks quite attractive. It's not quite the debt we saw being issued in the 2008 crisis. You recall we saw companies coming out with 8, 9, 10% paper. But it's pretty good. Some percent's pretty good. So we've started buying some of those and we actually think it's quite defensive, particularly in this kind of market. We don't own any preferred at the moment. We had invested in my previous life. I did invest more on the retractable side, but the preferred market's a little less liquid and I like the fact that the debt market's more liquid actually than the preferred market in terms of its convertible debenture. We do own one which we bought I think in the. We owned it. I think we bought more in the depths of the COVID 2020, early spring of 2020. And it's Collier. We own both the equity and the convertible debt right now. We've moved into the current renewal debt but it's so in the money it almost acts like equity. So again I'm getting the equity Exposure. But if things happen really bad, and I'm not talking about Colliers in general, I'm just talking about the market in general. I'm insulating the sense that I have a convertible debt structure as opposed to an equity. So we have the flexibility to do that. And it's just opportunities like basing on. People say, well how big do you want the debt and how big do. It's not, it's what's the opportunity? What do I think is the risk return? That's what we're always thinking about. What kind of return are we getting for the risk we're taking? And if we like it, we can put it into the portfolio.

Got it. That's good, good, good insight into the way you think. You actually mentioned briefly 2008, we worked together at that time. That was not a fun little period there. And I might suggest we're not in a super fun period right now. Any lessons that you learned or what was your experience back in and what are you doing today given, you know, the, the, the lessons of history that you experienced and managed?

So they always say terms of crisis, it's never quite the same. Like everyone different. And I would say today is different from 2008. I think 2008 was a little more frightening for me, maybe because I was earlier in my career, I didn't know how to deal with it. But secondly, I think probably indifferent 2008 from today is that the financial system in 2008 was really in question. You woke up one morning, Bear Stearns, you woke up the next, Lehman. You know, there were just a lot of things that were happening that there was no trust in the financial system and we didn't know. Like I remember people asked me, well, would you buy this? And I said, well, but I don't know what the off balance sheet risks are in these financials. You just didn't really know Today I think the financial system is much better. All these financials are better capitalized. The regulatory environment may have gone the other way, but everything seems to be. It's really the debt that's the problem right now at the government level and of course inflation. So. And how are we going to manage through this? And on top of that is that most of us who are managing money, including myself, have never managed in a rising rate environment. We've only actually managed in a declining rate environment. And so this is kind of new territory for all of us. So we're trying to stick to a discipline of fundamentals, going back and figuring out, okay, in a rising Rate environment, who has pricing power, who can maintain, who will survive, who can actually grow their cash flow? So that's how we're thinking about it. The issue I think has happened is that everything's moved so quickly. We've had rates move really quickly, inflation move really quickly, demand for one kind of a product. I just read an article, peloton used to be really hot. Now you can't even sell your peloton if you want to, and peloton can't even sell their peloton. It's just the changing demand, changing supply, interest rate environment, inflation, it's all changing. And I think that's what's causing all the confusion right now. So eventually it'll sell out, but we're in that period of too many things moving around.

And so what do you do in the portfolio now? Or do you get more defensive or put on more hedges or maybe another roundabout way of asking is sort of, what do you think the outlook is for the next 12 months, as you are stewards of investors money, what's your best move here?

So I'd say earlier this year we got quite defensive and I'd say we're pretty defensive as it is right now. We haven't really stretched out and gone a little bit more cyclical exposure, I would say, in thinking that the industrials will come back and so on. So we're quite defensive. We do have exposure to what you would call more cyclical, for sure, but much smaller weight, I would say, than we would have been. And I like that because there's a balance into the portfolio and I've learned, because I've done this for too long, I've got to be wrong. Something's going to prove me wrong and I want a little bit of that insurance in case I'm wrong.

Yeah.

And what we do is, yeah, we never. We never do dramatic changes, I would say is we're always monitoring. We have these. And as we get more confidence, you know, we're watching these course, we're listening to CEO Speaks. We're going. September is a big conference. As you know, everyone's during conference. So you're going to these, you're listening, and you could pivot a little bit. So I haven't done any pivoting yet. But, you know, I'm going to listen to what they say and what they say there. I would say the last quarter that reported and all the conference calls, I'd say they're a little cautious, obviously.

Right.

And I'm not feeling that there's a Lot of confidence right now. So we haven't stepped out.

Right. Well. Well, we know you're a good listener. We already established that at the beginning, so that's good. Okay, so. So let's just shift as we come to an end here. You know, you to me, are the epitome of a successful professional woman on Bay Street. Fabulous role model for other women that are building careers. But I also know you and your family. You've got a family life and daughters and lots of demands. Any insight, advice? You know, the question, how do you do it? And how should other folks think about building a career and a family life successfully like you have?

Well, one thing I would say is I'm not unique. Like, if you think about it, how many working women and men have families? And, you know, family pressures, work pressures, there's constantly balance. So I think I am one of many. I try to do the best I can. There's certain days I can say I am not perfect, but I am not unique. I think what's helped me, though, in the process is having an understanding employer and understanding family that supported me through both the difficult times. So there are what I view it as. It's a give and take relationship based on trust. So there are times that, you know, I have to take time for family, but other times where work, I need it, I'm needed for work, I give it a priority or I actually give it all. So it's give and take. And knowing that there's trust that I'm there and will do the work, I think goes a long way. It's like building a relationship with a client as you encounter offline the trust thing. Right. And the fact that people can rely on you when they need you. Just like your family, you know, your family needs you, you will drop everything to be there with them. So it works both ways.

Got it. Good. Okay, so last question. So you may or may not know, you know, our. Our sort of tagline over here is your wealth unlimited. We look at anything, we will do whatever families need to help manage their wealth. So unlimited is a very powerful word for us over here. So the question to you, the final question of the day here, if you weren't, you know, Janine Lee Chong, portfolio manager of your strategy, doing what you do, you can do anything in the world, unlimited options, what would you be doing right now?

That's a tough one because I really love what I do. And I think what I like about what I do is two aspects. One is I'm constantly learning, and you learn about like investing is learning about the world, learning where the capital goes and learning about the world. Right. All these new technologies and so on and what people are doing. And the second aspect is just meeting a whole bunch of interesting people that are way smarter than you are. I mean, that's where you learn as well. So is there a profession that you can do that, that you can gamble? It's pretty tough. That's pretty tough. But I would.

It doesn't have to be a profession. No.

I would share with you that before I got into this, I contemplated going into tax and offering, you know, tax planning and so on, and I chose investments instead. But I don't know, probably, you know, something totally different. Like a musician maybe?

Yeah, yeah, that would be great. That, that was mine too. But in my first podcast with the other actually former colleague of ours, he said musician. I said maybe musician. But I've been playing a lot more tennis lately. I have no ability to be a professional tennis player, but that would be amazing. Okay, look, Janine, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time. You know, it's. It's great to, you know, speak with you and understand what you're doing with your strategy. It's important to us and our clients, actually, and just always a pleasure speaking with you, you know. So thank you very, very much and wish you all the best. And we'll. We'll do round two of this in a little bit after we see what unfolds over the next year and look forward to hearing your thoughts then.

Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me as a guest.

Okay, all the best. We'll speak with you soon.

Okay, bye. Bye.

This has been Brian's conversation with Janine Lee Chong from Loretta Capital Advisors. We hope that you've enjoyed their conversation and learned more about how Janine thinks about investing and picking winners. Please note that Gensler wealth has invested with Lorata in the past and may continue to do so in the future. But this, this recording does not constitute investment advice nor an endorsement. This has been a Gensler wealth audio production. The unlimited podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Gensler and edited and mixed by me, Katherine Donville. If you're interested in hearing more from us, please like subscribe and give us a five star rating and follow us.

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Disclaimer from Waratah. The information relayed by any employee of Waratah Capital Advisors limited in this podcast is not to be construed as investment advice or as an endorsement of any entity or security discussed. Waratah takes no obligation to correct, update, or revise any statements made. In addition, participation in this podcast does not constitute an offer, promotion, or solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any fund, product or service in any jurisdiction managed by waratah.