“We have never been as cautiously positioned as we are today.”
Charles de Vaulx, Portfolio Manager, IVA Funds

In a recent interview with Advisor Perspectives, Charles de Vaulx, portfolio manager with International Value Advisors (IVA), told investors what IVA is doing to preserve capital in a tough investment environment.  The Worldwide fund, which is a core holding for Global View clients, is only invested about 53% equities.  IVA closed the fund to new investors in February of 2011 in order to retain the ability for management to buy smaller capitalization stocks and high-yield corporate bonds when appropriate. This strategy worked very well for portfolio managers from 2000-2002 and in 2008.

In this interview Charles discusses the investment climate and in particular some of the risks currently facing investors in the US, Japan, Europe, and Emerging Markets.  He also discusses the ironic need to own equities in the long-run because this is the best way to stay ahead of inflation.  Perhaps most importantly, Charles tells us that we need to remember history and that there are sometimes multiple decade periods where inflation rears its ugly head and interest rates rise wreaking havoc on companies unable to cope with these changes.

Read the full interview here.

We attended a recent webinar with IVA where these issues were discussed in much greater detail. We learned that IVA has recently added new analysts because they need more firepower to more closely examine smaller companies in Europe. This is something our team at Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities, also a closed fund, spends considerable time on.

For the transcript of this fascinating conference call addressing many issues in depth, click here.

IVA Worldwide and Grandeur Peaks Global Opportunities are both closed to new investors but remain open to clients of Global View Investment Advisors.  These two investments represent what we believe are opportunities for investors over the next decade.