Investment Philosophy

Marquest Asset Management Inc. is an established private investment management company that provides a diversified suite of quality equity and fixed income products to accredited and high net worth investors. Since its inception in 1985, Marquest has utilized an active investment management approach to take advantage of opportunities in a constantly changing market environment in our quest to generate the highest-possible risk-adjusted return for our clients. This commitment is the genesis of the company’s name, Marquest, which underscores our passion to meet our clients’ expectations.

Our investment approach is to identify investment opportunities by combination of top down analysis of the structural and cyclical trends in the economic and capital markets and bottom up security selection.

Canadian Equities

Our pursuit of exceptional growth companies begins with a thorough assessment of the economic backdrop to the capital markets.  From this analysis, we identify broad economic growth trends that provide the foundation for strong growth opportunities in specific sectors of the market.

Our stock selection approach incorporates screening the universe of potential candidates to find only the very best companies. We employ quantitative and qualitative analytical tools which identify only those stocks which meet our stringent investment criteria.

In creating our portfolio, we select companies with exceptional fundamentals in sectors that have strong growth prospects.  Our funds are not constrained by market capitalization or industry group weightings.  We do not buy and hold.  The high standards we maintain in our stock selection process make it difficult for stocks to get into our portfolio and easy for them to be replaced.

Once we have created our portfolio, we actively manager it, always making sure our investments continue to meet or exceed expectations.  We are constantly “refreshing the barrel with new water.”  Stocks aren’t sold simply because they disappoint.  They can also get pushed out by stronger, better companies or if their valuation becomes too high and/or their growth rate starts to slow.

US & International Equities

The investment environment today is truly global. When considering the merits of any investment, Canadian, U.S. or International, it is always in the context of global opportunities. The majority of our Canadian company investments have global exposure.

We will include in our portfolios U.S. and International equities provided they are complementary to our investment strategy and improve the fund’s diversification and return potential.

Fixed Income

Our approach to the credit markets and fixed income investing is premised on the understanding that we are responsible for more than just selecting bonds and debt securities – our investors count on us to protect their holdings and to generate income. As fixed income managers, we are lending the capital of our investors.  Our lending approach is to work with high quality obligors that understand the importance of debt in their capital structure and the value of solid cash-flow generating assets.

We prioritize our investment objectives as follows:

i)                    Principal protection

ii)                   Dependable income

iii)                 Enhanced returns

In selecting investments for our portfolios, we undergo a fundamental top-down analysis of economic, political and market trends in order to identify sector trends, credit cycle positioning, cash flow trends and forecasts for both the yield curve and the credit curve.  In addition, , bottom-up fundamentals are reviewed to assess the ability of obligors to generate cash and to meet interest and principal obligations on their debt.  At the company level, we focus on industry position, operating leverage, management strength and experience, historical earnings and future projections, liquidity profile and capital structure positioning – we like logs of other capital below us.  Asset-backed and structured credits are evaluated based on the strength of their collateral and we look for underlying debt that is well documented and carefully originated.

Alternative Investments

Our Focus Fund is an absolute return strategy with a 0% management fee and 20% performance fee on all positive returns. This is a long-only strategy with some shorter-term trading to take advantage of event-driven opportunities, both within specific sectors of the market and among individual securities. To preserve capital, the strategy may hold significant cash reserves and purchase future contracts and/or inverse ETF’s during periods of market uncertainty