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Money manager Jerome Hass says Canadians pay much less attention to mid-cap stocks now than when he co-founded his firm 17 years ago – and he believes that’s a problem for investors and the economy at large. “It’s disconcerting to us, and we think it should be disconcerting for Canadians,” says Mr. Hass, a partner and portfolio manager at Lightwater Partners Ltd. in Toronto, which oversees more than $100-million in assets. “If that market segment steadily disappears … so too do the jobs and infrastructure that go with it.”
He says there are more barriers for investors looking to invest in small- and mid-cap players, and, “as a consequence, most investors load up on the top 150 large-cap names in Canada.” Dwindling interest is also unfortunate given the opportunities he sees in the mid-cap space, which his firm categorizes as stocks with a market capitalization between $200-million and $2.5-billion., which includes Canadian equities that are “under-researched” and “misunderstood” by the mainstream market, is up 11.6 per cent over the past 12 months and has produced an annualized return of 5 per cent in the past five years, as of Feb. 29.