Libsyn Directory

Global Equity: The Odyssey, the AI Trade, and Concentration Risk | EP 219

Release Date: 07/02/2026

Private Equity: The Blurring Line Between Public and Private Markets | EP 227

Art of Boring

Private equity is opening up to individual investors, and the line between public and private markets is blurring. In this episode, private investments portfolio manager Peter Lieu and institutional portfolio manager Kevin Minas break down secondaries and continuation vehicles, the difference between IRR and distributions, and how Mawer built institutional-quality private equity access through fund commitments, co-investments, and vintage-year diversification, including a new mutual fund trust for registered accounts like RRSPs and TFSAs. 0:00 - Introduction: Private Equity Beyond Endowments...

AI CapEx: How Hyperscalers Turn Data Centers Into Returns | EP 226

Art of Boring

AI CapEx is on track to reach roughly $700 billion at the four largest hyperscalers this year, and equity analyst Irena Petkovic breaks down where all that money is going and what has to be true for it to earn a return. She explains how data centers turned from cost centers into revenue-producing AI factories, the four ways hyperscalers monetize compute, and how the token economy actually works. She then weighs the early evidence of returns against the risks around token pricing, debt financing, and public backlash, and describes how the team positions the portfolio around it. 0:00 -...

Memory, Part 3: Cyclicality, Leveraged EFTs, and Pricing Uncertainty | EP 225

Art of Boring

How do you value a memory semiconductor stock like SK Hynix when no one can predict DRAM prices? Equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo walks through the team’s Monte Carlo valuation framework: a discounted cash flow run through thousands of scenarios that prices the business on a distribution of returns rather than a single forecast. He also explains how two-times leveraged single-stock ETFs have been amplifying SK Hynix’s daily price swings, why regulators and Korean brokers are responding to retail leverage, and why flow-driven volatility can be a gift for long-term investors. The through-line:...

Memory, Part 2: The Risks from China, Technological Change, and Overcapacity | EP 224

Art of Boring

Memory has been one of the strongest corners of the semiconductor industry, and strong returns invite hard questions. In the second part of this series, equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo examines the main risks to the memory thesis: rising competition from China's CXMT and YMTC, the technologies that could reduce AI's appetite for memory, and the wave of capacity investment that could eventually tip the industry back into oversupply. He weighs each risk against the constraints holding it back, from equipment export controls to limited EUV supply, and notes that memory companies already trade at...

Memory, Part 1: From Boom-Bust Commodity to AI Bottleneck | EP 223

Art of Boring

One of the defining market stories of the past 12 months has not been AI chips that compute, but the chips that remember. Equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo explains how memory works, from DRAM and NAND to high bandwidth memory, and how an industry that destroyed wealth for four decades became disciplined after consolidating to three players in 2013. He then walks through what changed: AI inference has made memory the key bottleneck, memory content is climbing with each new generation of GPUs, and new supply takes three to four years to build. With prices up sharply and customers signing long-term...

Investing in the Build Canada Theme | EP 222

Art of Boring

Canada has spent a generation underinvesting in the infrastructure and resources that underpin its economy, and that may be starting to change. Canadian small cap equity analyst Dominic Drzazga examines the Build Canada theme: what it actually means beyond the headlines, and what has shifted since the federal election. He walks through the legislative groundwork, from the Building Canada Act to a fast-tracked pipeline of named projects, and explains why the clearest near-term opportunities potentially sit in the middle of the value chain rather than with the eventual asset owners. Above all,...

Quarterly Update | Q2 2026 | EP 221

Art of Boring

Canadian equities gained in the second quarter of 2026 even as the economy tripped the technical definition of a recession and an oil shock sent crude toward $120 before it fell back. Institutional portfolio manager Kevin Minas and investment counsellor Stu Morrow review the quarter, from the gap between the Canadian market and the Canadian economy to the case for holding commodity exposure as geopolitical risk becomes a recurring feature rather than a one-off. They also discuss what a narrow, AI-led rally means for a diversified portfolio, record hyperscaler bond issuance in Canada, and how...

Emerging Markets: Different Hats, Better Decisions, and Learning Faster | EP 220

Art of Boring

Investment teams increasingly build and rely on their own AI tools, but the payoff depends on how deliberately a team reinvests the time that AI frees up. Emerging markets portfolio manager Wen Quan Cheong walks through how his team puts believability-weighted decision making into daily practice, and where AI has genuinely enhanced the process. He closes with a tour of the emerging-market themes he is watching most closely, from reshoring and clean-room capacity to physical AI, low-earth-orbit satellites, and businesses winning simply by putting the customer first. Above all, he returns to the...

Global Equity: The Odyssey, the AI Trade, and Concentration Risk | EP 219

Art of Boring

AI portfolio construction in global equity markets (memory semiconductors, mega IPOs, and how to manage concentration risk) is the focus of this conversation with Mawer’s global equity portfolio manager Paul Moroz. Drawing on Homer's Odyssey, he explains the discipline the team applies when navigating themes that are moving quickly: from trimming SK Hynix systematically as the position grew, to sizing up what a wave of large IPOs means for cost of capital, to the central trade-off between underexposure and overconcentration in the AI complex. He also puts numbers around the portfolio's AI...

Looking Under the Hood: Canadian Equity Concentration and Diversification | EP 218

Art of Boring

Canada’s stock market has set repeated record highs in 2026, even as the domestic economy feels soft. Canadian equity portfolio manager Mark Rutherford explains the gap between the two, and why a large weight in financials can represent more diversification rather than less. He walks through how the team rotated within the sector as the banks re-rated, and the discipline behind trimming a gold position that had run. As indexes themselves have grown more concentrated, the conversation lands on a simple idea: knowing what you own matters more than ever. Key takeaways • The...

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Memory semiconductors, including SK Hynix, illustrate the discipline required around fast-moving themes. The team has sold back nearly as much as it invested in SK Hynix while the position has grown to over 5% of the portfolio — a deliberate trimming driven by ongoing valuation modeling, not a change in the thesis. The risk is not the price-to-earnings multiple; it is the cyclicality of earnings, and the question of how long the current upcycle runs.

Odysseus' response to the Sirens when he ties himself to the mast and has his crew row with beeswax in their ears is a useful analogy for process. Decisions made in advance of the moment of seduction, grounded in a systematic valuation framework, are more reliable than decisions made in the heat of a rapid move.

Large IPOs entering markets signal a more capital-intensive economic period and raise real questions about where the capital comes from. Companies already in the S&P 500 benefit from a structural cost-of-capital advantage over those outside it, and the team watches for what needs to be sold as large new issuers absorb liquidity. A period of multiple compression, while uncomfortable for near-term statements, improves long-term reinvestment returns.

The Scylla-versus-Charybdis choice (the monster on one side, the whirlpool on the other) maps directly onto the AI portfolio construction problem. The team's AI hardware exposure sits at approximately 22.7% of the portfolio; a 50% drawdown in that sleeve would represent roughly an 11-12% hit to the overall portfolio. An offsetting 15.5% is held in hyperscalers (Meta, Microsoft, Amazon) whose capital expenditure is the revenue of the hardware side, producing a natural hedge that brings net directional AI exposure to around 7-8%.

The team's response to the Cyclops story (Odysseus boasting after his victory, which brought years of suffering from Poseidon) is portfolio humility expressed through construction. The global equity portfolio now holds just under 90 names, with positions sized smaller and traded in smaller increments to reduce the cost of being wrong and to manage in a high-volatility environment.

Some holdings that look nothing like AI businesses have begun moving with AI sentiment. The team treats these correlation shifts as arbitrage opportunities: when something is priced as an AI stock but carries different underlying risk, there may be a better entry or exit available elsewhere in the complex.

0:00 - Introduction: Homer's Odyssey and the AI Trade
1:39 - The Sirens: Memory Stocks, SK Hynix, and Valuation Discipline
7:54 - Managing a Position That Has Grown Beyond Its Cost Base
10:30 - Mega IPOs, Cost of Capital, and Index Inclusion Advantage
15:49 - Scylla vs. Charybdis: Choosing Your Risk in AI
17:58 - AI Portfolio Construction: Numbers, Offsets, and Net Exposure
23:11 - Correlation Creep: When Non-AI Stocks Start Acting Like AI
24:42 - The Cyclops Story: Humility, Diversification, and Process
26:53 - Closing: Managing Money Across Generations
27:15 - Outro and Subscribe

Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Institutional Portfolio Manager
Guest: Paul Moroz, CFA, Global Equity Portfolio Manager

This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts.

Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore.

Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/

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