Hot Off the Web- April 5, 2009 Tom Bradley (founder of Steadyhand Investments) in Globe and Mail’s “‘It will sell’: A tipoff for bad investment products” warns readers who may now be psychologically ripe for the trap of “guaranteed income” and “principal protected funds” to beware! “Such things as downside protection, tax deferral or arbitrage […]

Hot Off the Web- March 29, 2009 Jason Zweig in WSJ’s “The fight over who will guard your nest egg” discusses the tug war over who will regulate those who sell investment products and financial advice to investors. He explains the distinction between “stockbrokers and other securities salespeople who work for Wall Street firms and […]

Hot Off the Web- March 22, 2009 WSJ’s McQueen reports that “Worry grows over insurers as ratings slip” . Investment losses and in some areas higher than expected claims, have forced states to take over in excess of half million policies. Some individuals are concerned, not just because of recent ratings downgrades but even if […]

Hot Off the Web– March 15, 2009 WSJ’s Larry Light writes in “With deflation possibly near, this economist is all abuzz” about preparing for the coming deflation. He reports on Garry Shilling’s views who recommends apartment REITs (demand for renting will increase as buying houses will become less interesting given little or no promise of […]

Hot Off the Web- March 8, 2009 Tom Lauricella discusses problems with target-date funds in WSJ’s “For retirement, ‘One size’ isn’t always a good fit” . First of all they are not all the same; they use different levels of asset allocations (not just stock/bond mix, but also for example domestic/international) as retirement date approaches. […]

Hot Off the Web– March 1, 2009 In Jason Zweig’s WSJ piece entitled “After the crash, Stocks may face a long road back”, reports based on historical evidence (Dimson, Marsh and Staunton of London Business Scholl) it is expected (i.e. 50% chance) to take nine years for markets to recover to 2007 highs. The data […]

Hot Off the Web- February 22, 2009 Surprise?!? “The index funds win again” The NYT article by Mark Hulbert reports that in a new study by Mark Kritzman he concluded that over a hypothetical 20 year period passive returns of 10% outperform active mutual fund returns of 13.5% and hedge fund returns of 19%, once […]

Hot Off the Web– February 15, 2009 WSJ’s Kevin Helliker reports that “You might as well face it: You are addicted to success” It’s bad enough that with the growing number of job losses people lose their livelihoods, but the problem is aggravated with the “unmitigated identification of self with occupation, accomplishment and professional status” […]

Hot Off the Web- February 8, 2009 AsianInvestor’s Jame DiBiasio reports that “Pimco rolls out GDP-based bond funds” “The Global Advantage Bond Index, “Gladi” for short, is based on market GDP rather than on capitalisation. The problem with the Lehman AGG, which has been the de facto standard for the past decade, is that the […]

Hot Off the Web– February 1, 2009 In a very interesting NYT article “American Express kept a (very) watchful eye on charges” Ron Lieber talks about the “big brother” credit card companies scrutinizing your purchases, not just looking for potentially fraudulent ones. Recently American Express cut customers’ credit lines based on what establishments they shopped […]