Most investors have loaded up on the United States’ famed Magnificent Seven, the seven big tech names that powered market returns through 2023 and 2024. Robert Taylor is not one of them.
The head of equities and interim chief investment officer at Calgary-based Canoe Financial runs several funds with roughly C$3 billion under management, yet none of his mandates holds Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia or Tesla.
Taylor says the group’s valuations do not offer a margin of safety and that over-owning a handful of mega-caps leaves portfolios exposed if market leadership rotates. His stance has not cramped results: Canoe Equity Portfolio Class F returned 19.2 percent in the year to mid-July, beating both its peer group and benchmark index, according to Morningstar data.
Energy, banks anchor Canoe holdings
Taylor’s flagship equity fund keeps only eight per cent in information technology, well below the Canadian Focused Equity category average of 15 percent. Instead, energy accounts for 21 percent of assets and basic materials 7.3 percent, with the balance spread across financials, health-care and industrial names.
“We haven’t chased the high-growth technology stocks, as they are difficult to analyze and forecast,” Taylor said in an interview.
Large holdings include Tourmaline Oil, ARC Resources and Agnico Eagle Mines on the resource side, while American Express, Wells Fargo, Elevance Health and UnitedHealth Group provide U.S. exposure.
The portfolio is deliberately concentrated at 40 to 50 names. Taylor and his five-member analyst team track a watch-list of about 1,000 companies and buy only when a five-year earnings model shows at least 15 percent annual growth potential.
He views today’s narrow market as an opportunity. “The better companies could ultimately benefit from a rotation from the generals to the soldiers,” he said, referring to money moving from the biggest stocks to the rest of the market.
Volatility is not shunned. Canoe’s funds added to bank positions during last year’s U.S. regional banking scare and trimmed energy after a strong run in early 2025. Taylor argues that owning businesses with pricing power and free-cash-flow growth is the best hedge against sticky inflation and higher interest rates.
Auditor turned disciplined stock picker
Taylor grew up in Kitchener, Ont., studied business at Wilfrid Laurier University and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1999. He started on Bay Street with PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving to CIBC World Markets as a research associate. After a decade at BMO Global Asset Management, where he oversaw more than US$4 billion, he joined Canoe in 2013 and now leads the firm’s equity effort.
For Canadian investors worried they missed the tech rally, Taylor’s record shows another path. By digging for value in energy, banks and health-care, he has kept pace with an index dominated by the market’s largest names, without owning a single one of them.
