Hot Off the Web In “Dancing bears at your retirement party”  WSJ’s Tom Lauricella discusses the challenges faced by somebody considering imminent retirement in an environment of falling equity and real estate prices. He refers to “timing risk”, referring to the increased probability of running out of money during retirement if there is poor market […]

Hot Off the Web Jon Clements drives home how counterintuitive investing really is in WSJ’s “Falling down the market rabbit hole”.  Some of the 10 reasons that he gives include: if everybody “knows” that something will happen then it probably won’t, trying to preserve capital can actually wreck it (by reaching too far for yield […]

Hot Off the Web In Financial Post’s “Inflation can bite seniors’ budgets hardest”  William Hanley discusses how inflation can have significant impact on retirees, and not just when the published CPI rises. Retirees’ lifestyle can be affected also when their personal CPI diverges from the published ones. He also quotes Malcolm Hamilton who disagrees on […]

Hot Off the Web Jonathan Clements in WSJ’s “The joy of building your portfolio”  discusses his recommended asset allocation in building the U.S. investor’s portfolio. First select a point in the range of 40-80% stocks (typically 60%), the balance in high quality U.S. bonds. He then recommends 25(-30) % foreign content in the stock component. […]

Hot Off the Web George Athanassakos in Globe and Mail’s “Bond investors beware” cautions bond investors not to be lulled into a false sense of security. With gold near $1,000/oz., oil at $100/barrel, money supply growing at 7%/year and food inflation expected to increase to over 7% during the next 10 years (vs. 2.3% over […]

Hot Off the Web Tim Cestnick had two articles in the Globe and mail explaining how options are taxed in Canada. In “Options trading and the taxman”  he outlines what puts and calls are and explains the roles of the option writer/seller and holder/buyer. The seller essentially commits to sell (call) or buy (put) some […]

Hot Off the Web In WSJ’s “He invests, she invests: Who gets the better returns?” Jonathan Clements reports on differences between men and women’s approach to investment. While men trade much more frequently than women and thus lose 2.65% of the available stock performance, women still have lower portfolio performance due to being more risk […]

Hot Off the Web In WSJ’s “Questions for parents” Shelly Banjo discusses how adult children can approach a discussion of the adequacy of their parent’s retirement plans with them. I recommend to you Huntington Bancshares’ Checklist for Life  as a great starting point for you to document what and where are your key financial assets […]

Hot Off the Web The focus of this week’s, somewhat abbreviated, blog will be what you should or should not be doing with your portfolio in these market swoons. I am having laptop problems. My sleek new laptop has essentially packed it in (hopefully only temporarily), so I am trying to do this on my […]

Hot Off the Web Much of last week’s financial pages were filled with the doom and gloom of: recession (is it still coming or is already here), subprime mortgage crisis (well under way), the credit default swap crisis (just got under way, what is it and whether it will be worse the subprime crisis), the […]