Brian Belski, the long-time investment strategist known for his steadfast bullish views, left BMO Capital Markets BMO-T this week after a 13-year tenure, and has started his own portfolio advisory firm.
Nick Roccanova, who was head of U.S. Equity Strategy at BMO Capital Markets, and Sooyun Hong, formerly portfolio strategy analyst at BMO, will be joining Mr. Belski at his new firm, Humilis Investment Strategies. Mr. Belski will also employ a third person, Ryan Edwards, a writer on financial markets.
Long-time investment strategist Brian Belski has launched his own portfolio advisory firm.Supplied/Bank of Montreal
“This is 100 per cent something that I wanted to do for a while,” Mr. Belski, 59, said Friday in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “We hope to be able to provide much of what we’ve done in the past with respect to market commentary and providing portfolio advice.”
“My jobs at BMO were the head of U.S. strategy, the head of Canadian strategy, and the head of portfolio strategy,” Mr. Belski added. “It takes a toll on your life, jumping around on airplanes and trying to keep all these balls in the air. I’m really excited about having one ball in the air, and that’s doing portfolio advisory work and overseeing equity portfolios.”
Mr. Belski said he is fully funding Humilis himself and is working toward doing advisory work for institutions in both the U.S. and Canada. He’s hoping that list of clients will include BMO. Humilis will not hold assets under management itself.
Prior to BMO, Mr. Belski worked as an investment strategist at both Oppenheimer & Co. OPY-N and Merrill Lynch IPB-N.
BMO confirmed Mr. Belski’s departure this week but has not elaborated on the circumstances.
Humilis will be based in Naples, Fla., where Mr. Belski has resided since 2021.
Mr. Belski, who makes frequent guest appearances on BNN and CNBC, is often mistaken as a Canadian. But he’s an American with his roots from Minnesota, where he still spends several months of the year.
The strategist has long suggested U.S. stocks are in a 25-year secular bull market that started in 2009, and he says his market views remain “resolute.”
His last issued year-end target for the S&P 500 was 7000, which would imply only modest gains between now and the end of the year.
He said he thinks there could be “a bit of a pause” in the market’s advance, and he cautions that the TSX may lag U.S. indexes in coming months given its strong recent outperformance, which was largely tied to the surge in bullion prices.
“I’m increasingly concerned that too many investors in Canada have jumped on the gold trade the last three months, and that really bothers me. So be prudent,” he said.
He suggests taking some profits in the gold sector and ”buying some good old-fashioned U.S. companies that are more diversified, and can weather a storm if we do indeed see a pullback in the market." U.S. financials are an example, he said, and a couple stocks he specifically likes right now are Lululemon LULU-Q and Aritzia ATZ-T.
“I think that we have a whole third of the bull market to go,” he said. “Until we see a massive spike in IPO activity, until we see a lot of frivolous and frothy M&A activity, we’re nowhere near a bubble.”