How a discretionary PM has managed resurgent global markets

Each month at WP we offer a slate of articles and content pieces that go deep on a particular topic. This March we’re focusing on global markets.

Markets aren’t zero sum, but performance is relative. That might be one way to typify Francis Sabourin’s approach to portfolio management as international developed and emerging markets started to outperform North American equities over 2024 and 2025. Sabourin is Senior Investment Advisor and Senior portfolio manager at Francis Sabourin Wealth Management of Richardson Wealth, and he has long maintained international exposures in his clients’ portfolios, even in the 12-year period between 2012 and 2024 when those allocations largely lagged. He explains, however, that his approach is much more geared towards business fundamentals than specific regional themes.

Sabourin outlined how he’s played global markets now, inclusive of opportunities within North America. He explained why, and how, he allocates to specific ex-North American markets, and why despite the global resurgence we’ve seen he continues to view a US allocation as the core of a total equity approach. In outlining where he’s putting clients’ marginal dollars in an era of broader opportunities, Sabourin emphasized a view of fundamentals and potential upside that can be found in quiet themes.

“A good portfolio manager or good investors needs to be contrarian to find where is where to find unloved stories that become less unloved stories,” Sabourin says. “You can find depressed sectors that become less depressed when there is a catchup, or a turnaround. You have to find that inflection point for some sectors.”

As part of his team’s total equity approach, Sabourin has been allocating to global markets alongside his core US and Canadian investments. He notes that the strength we’ve seen in global markets can be directly tied to the strength in the US in prior years. While US markets underperformed many global indices last year, they had several years of double digit returns prior to that. He ascribes some of the outperformance to the reallocation of profits from US investments. Despite wobbles on US markets, he continues to view that country as the core of any equity strategy, given the liquidity of its markets, the innovative nature of its companies, and the global themes it captures.

Ongoing geopolitical volatility tied to the US-Israeli war with Iran has been negative for many global markets, as well as US equities. In this environment, Sabourin says he’s seeking resilience in the underlying businesses, rather than advantages in a particular geography. That resilience can be found in companies around the world, but Sabourin notes that even in some increasingly popular areas, such as Europe, earnings growth doesn’t match what can be found among US companies sharing that same resilience.

Sabourin makes the wider point, too, that the location of a company’s headquarters or stock listing can obscure its nature as a global business. Nestle might be headquartered in Geneva and listed on the Swiss Exchange, but its revenue comes from around the world. Apple might be headquartered in California and listed on the Nasdaq, but its business is global as well. Sabourin prefers to look for where capital is flowing by business type rather than geography. That said, in this current moment, those flows are hard to predict. That creates volatility, but it also creates pockets where those “unloved stories” might be found. European banks, for example, were an unloved story for years before 2025, when shifts in sentiment and corporate governance saw their share prices take off. Finding the next unloved story, in Sabourin’s view, is part of the challenge now facing portfolio managers.

In the meantime, diversification remains a useful tool. Achieving global diversification, however, can come with many vehicles. Because of the nature of his business, Sabourin likes to buy stocks directly, but can only trade in stocks listed in the US and Canada, as well as the Depository Receipts of global companies listed in North America. For other global markets, he prefers to use mutual funds actively managed by local specialists offering expertise beyond what his team can provide.

Sabourin’s approach is inherently more nuanced than the straightforward, if overly broad, narrative of a US decline and an international market resurgence. Financial advice, however, is inherently about managing different emotions. Clients may be convinced by that more straightforward narrative, but Sabourin can use past performance to demonstrate the value of nuance. When he has the record of successfully managing their assets through the COVID-19 pandemic to fall back on, Sabourin is easily able to remind them of why they trust him in the first place.

“It's all about managing emotions and expectation,” Sabourin says.