“How are you guys holding up”? It’s a question that I’m running into more and more often as stock markets wrap up their worst first half of the year in half a century. The strange part is, I’m not hearing this question from clients, but rather from other financial advisors and people who work in the wealth management industry (more on this later). As of the end of June, the TSX is down 9.6% on the year and the Canadian Bond Index is down 12.2%. The S&P 500 is down 18.5%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq index is off 29.7%. A number of significant investment firms in the Canadian marketplace (no ..read more

When I sit down every few months to write our latest reading list, it gives me time to reflect on what’s happened in the world. What continues to astonish me is the pace of change today. We continue to see dramatic changes and how society adapts to those changes in interesting ways. The number of confirmed COVID cases surpassed 500 million globally recently, but it does feel like the pandemic is finally somewhat under control (at least here in Canada). The broader concerns are now rising interest rates, soaring inflation, supply-chain chaos in China and the war in Ukraine which are all causing ..read more

What do you do at Northwood? I am a Principal of Client Service at Northwood, but I wear a few hats. Predominately, I am the go to contact for about a dozen of our family clients. I work across generations to help clients achieve their financial goals. Along with my colleagues at Northwood, we aim to help families think strategically and remove the mental clutter to enable better decision making. In addition to my client work, I co-lead our internal committees on technology, business development, marketing and thought-leadership. Any fulfilling moments that stand out for you with a client? I ..read more

Two friends are out camping. They hear a cry for help and rush into a fast-flowing stream to save a drowning child… only to see another struggling child drift by… and then another, and another. As one of the campers starts to run to shore, his incredulous friend demands to know where he is going. Over his shoulder he yells “I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who is throwing all these kids in the water.” I read this story in the new book from Dan Heath (one of my favorite business writers) called Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems before they Happen. I highly recommend the book, by t ..read more

As a former tax partner at an accounting firm, one of my jobs was to work through the budget night and into the following morning and write a summary of the salient tax changes that impacted our clients. As budget night approached, I would get the same feeling I had historically felt every Sunday night as a student….that “queasy, anxious, uncertain about the future” kind of feeling. Well, almost six years after retiring from my tax partner role and I still had that feeling as the April 7, 2022 federal budget approached. What changes were coming? How would these changes impact our lives? From ..read more

Picture this. You sit down at your desk early on a Monday morning the start of a busy week. As soon as you turn your laptop on, your stomach sinks at the sight of large ominous black screen with text that says your most sensitive files have been encrypted. You are instructed to send $1 million in Bitcoin, within the next 24 hours, to a random crypto wallet. If you don’t make the payment within a few days, the message says, you will lose access to all your personal files, and they will be transferred into the dark web. Unfortunately, this isn’t a farfetched scenario… It’s a ransomware attack ..read more

See our latest contributions, appearances, and articles from our Northwood staff Euromoney Awards | We are proud to share that Northwood Family Office has once again been recognized as the #1 Multi Family Office in both Canada and North America in the 2022 Euromoney Private Banking and Wealth Management 2022 survey. The firm has also received the top ranking in Canada and North America across multiple categories this year. Read more on the awards here. The Family Business Podcast | Russ Haworth hosts Northwood Family Office’s CEO & Chairman Tom McCullough&nb ..read more

Markets are moving fast these days, and in a different direction from the one that we have all gotten used to over the past two years. In light of that, I wanted to share five thoughts on where we’re at, and how we got here. By the time you read this, there is a good chance that at least some of what I’ve written below (writing on May 9) might seem dated. Here are five big picture thoughts on what’s been going on: An Incredible Run It’s still incredible to look back at how quickly the stock market bottomed in the very beginning of the global pandemic. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organi ..read more

The 2020s have been quite the decade so far. If I told you in December of 2019 that the new decade would bring a global pandemic, inflation above 7%, and a war in Europe threatening global stability — all within a couple of years — you would have thought I was crazy. But here we are. After almost two full years of a global pandemic, many of us have been considering the new reality that is emerging and what it means for the future of economics, politics, and culture. The Omicron variant that flared up globally late last year reminded us that we are still in a fragile state – here in Canada we a ..read more

By now, most of our readers will have seen the news that Northwood Family Office will be acquired by CI Financial. I thought I’d provide some brief insight on the path we took to get here and why we are excited about the future. About two years ago, Northwood engaged a consultant to help us update our strategic plan. The primary objective was to agree upon where we want to go in the next phase of our business and what we had to do to ensure we set up the firm for long term success. Central to this objective was ensuring we had the right ownership, leadership, and management structures in place ..read more