The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday, Aug. 25, edition that the disparity between underperforming Canadian stocks and their shining U.S. peers never stays this wide for long, which is why Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services' IA Clarington Investments manager Terry Thib is significantly overweight Canada. A Bloomberg dispatch to The Globe reports that Mr. Thib says, "You're just seeing such a huge divergence in both performance and valuation, and I do feel there's an opportunity to close that gap a little bit." Mr. Thib says: "I think it's overdone. This environment is a lay-up for Canada." Canada's S&P/TSX composite index is down 1.5 per cent year to date, while the S&P 500 index is up 9.2 per cent, leading to the widest valuation gap since 2008. Mr. Thib, who focuses on North American small-cap and mid-cap equities, says less than 15 per cent of his investments are in U.S. securities, with the rest in Canada. His U.S. investment allocation has trended lower this year as he believes equities are in a "classic later stage," where cyclicals rally and investors reallocate capital from growth to value stocks -- moves that tend to be good for Canada.