Stock markets are poised for four to five years of healthy growth, and investors are likely to find the best opportunities in resources, according to Ned Goodman, president and CEO of Dundee Corp.

Speaking at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management on Wednesday, Goodman said that emerging markets are set to lead global growth in the years ahead, which will spur demand for natural resources of all kinds. He urged investors to look to inflation-protected investments such as real estate, infrastructure, agriculture, energy, base metals and gold.

“The fact is that as far as the metals market goes, we do not have enough to meet the demand growth, and that’s my personal investment theme: resources,” Goodman said. “It’s my view that those emerging countries in the world…will pave the way for stock market gains for at least the next four to five years or more.”

Goodman urged investors to tap into the emerging markets theme by investing in Canadian resource stocks. He pointed out that this approach is less risky than investing directly in emerging markets.

Goodman is a proponent of long-term investing, and he expressed concern over the growing popularity of day-trading and speculative investing, which he said have fuelled a “casino atmosphere” in the stock markets. The advent of exchange traded funds tracking nearly every type of commodity, and even tracking measures of volatility, are examples of this trend, he said.

“You’re betting on the volatility of the market in the future, rather than investing in a business, which was the reason stock markets were formed in the first place,” Goodman said. “We should think of ourselves as business people when we buy a stock.”

He also expressed concern over the growing prominence of crowd behaviour in investing, which is often irrational. Crowds generally make investment decisions without understanding all of the facts, he said.

“It is the power of crowd psychology that creates so-called bubbles,” he said. “Today, with the communication of the internet, the crowds have become even larger.”

Goodman urges investors to try to ignore crowd behaviour and investing fads. Rather, he said investors should take a traditional buy-and-hold approach to investing, by buying solid companies with sustainable earnings and inflation protection, and holding them for 40 to 50 years. But he admitted that very few people stay invested for such long periods of time.