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Market Insights

Our Market Strategist helps investment advisors and clients

Our Chief Market Strategist James Thorne gives our team a leading-edge, curating insights from data sources and providing analysis to help our investment advisors select the best possible assets and plans for clients. Jim is a top-industry expert, translating complex economic and market issues and grounding his counsel in historical context to help advisors and investors navigate short-term issues with their potential impact on financial goals. His views consider global economic, political, and financial market events and their short and long-term portfolio implications.

James Thorne

James Thorne

Chief Market Strategist

Prior to joining Wellington-Altus Private Wealth, James Thorne was most recently chief capital market strategist and senior portfolio manager at a leading independent investment management firm.

He also held various senior investment management positions in the U.S., including chief economist of a major U.S. financial institution, chief investment officer of equities, managing director and chief capital market strategist. During his tenure he developed small, mid- and large-capitalization investment strategies, which employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis and achieved top-quartile performance.

Dr. Thorne received a Ph.D. in economics in the fields of finance and industrial organization from York University and worked as a professor of economics and finance at the Schulich School of Business and at Bishop’s University. He also regularly appears on BNN and in other media outlets.

Read our past Market Insights

February Market Insights: Fortress America and the Colony Next Door

Historians are likely to regard Donald Trump’s presidency as a pivot—as significant as any in U.S. history comparable to the Jacksonian turn, the New Deal, or the Reagan Revolution. Yet Wall Street remains strangely somnolent, pricing in neither the durability nor the depth of what is unfolding. The Trump Doctrine should be seen as equal to—not subordinate to—the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 U.S. policy that warned European powers against further colonization or interference in the Western Hemisphere. It represents a new organizing framework for U.S. power that blends hard power, economic nationalism, and pro-growth domestic policy.

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February 4, 2026

January Market Insights: The 2026 Market Forecast

History does not move in straight lines. Markets ricochet between excess and restraint in violent cycles, a truth American economist Peter Bernstein hammered home and one investors are again being forced to relearn. The foundation for the 2026 investment thesis is that with interest payments on U.S. debt now exceeding annual defense spending, the fiscal constraint has become too binding to ignore, and structural adjustment is no longer optional. We have no choice but to adjust; the system is in a state of flux.

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January 6, 2026
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