Cole Kachur - Senior Investment Advisor, Portfolio Manager at Wellington-Altus Private Wealth (Submitted photo)

By Nigel Maxwell

Market uncertainty

Wealth management specialist weighs in on tariffs and investments

Mar 11, 2025 | 3:00 PM

A wealth management specialist says he’s had an uptick in the number of people concerned about their investments in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the old adage of ‘buy and hold’ doesn’t work the way it used to.

Cole Kachur with the Kachur Wealth Management Group, acknowledged the recent plunge of the U.S. stock market impacts the bottom line, but market strength relies on an aspect of predictability.

“When there’s a lot of turmoil and uncertainty, specifically as it relates to tariffs it’s hard to predict what a company’s value is going to because a lot of these companies are not just in the U.S. or Canada, they are global reaching companies,” he said.

The S&P 500 sank 1.1 per cent Tuesday after Trump said he would raise tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Canada.

That sent the index nearly 10 per cent below its record set just a few weeks ago. That was before stocks began tumbling on uncertainty about how much pain Trump is willing for the economy to endure through tariffs and other policies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 625 points.

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Kachur added it doesnt help that the American president’s message and position on the tariffs appears to change on a daily basis.

“But even more so the waffling and the moving back and forth, where one day there’s gonna be tariffs and the next day they’re not, three days later it’s tariffs on something else,” he explained.

With respect to advice for investors, Cole encouraged an active approach, that involves a combination of mitigation and risk instead of just ‘riding the wave.’

He added his own clients have diversified portfolios across different asset bases and are not fully exposed to one single market in the U.S. or Canada.

“You know it’s unfortunate because everything else is pointing to a market that wants to go up but when the person who probably has the most power to influence markets and is influencing them in a negative way, we’re seeing results like we are getting right now,” he said.

Still, Kachur said its more important than ever to be active within your portfolio.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On Blue Sky: @nigelmaxwell.bsky.social

— with files from the Canadian Press