(Bloomberg) -- The rally in Canadian equities led Ned Davis Research to urge investors to boost their exposure to the market by upgrading Toronto-listed stocks to overweight.
“Canada has moved in tandem with the US as a decisive outperformer,” writes Tim Hayes, chief global investment strategist at Ned Davis Research. He added that even after the rally, Canadian stock “valuations are far better and it is less dependent on the sectors of the megacaps.”
The S&P/TSX Composite Index is currently on pace to post its best year since 2009. The benchmark has closed at records 42 times this year and is up 22% so far, nearly keeping pace with the 26% gain of the S&P 500.
As a result, Hayes now recommends clients hold 5% of their equity portfolio in Canadian stocks, its second largest weighting after the 69% call for US stocks. It cut the recommended exposure to emerging-market equities to 5%, citing broad-based weakness there.
The rally in Canadian stocks this year has also been broader than in the US, where megacap tech companies have fueled much of the gains.
Hayes noted the broad-based rally and the composition of the market, which is dominated by energy and financial stocks that have “the highest trailing and forward earnings yields, contrasting the tech sector’s lowest-ranking yields.”
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