Hot Off the Web- May 11, 2008 In Globe and Mail’s “Flaherty closes in on new PPN rules”  Kevin Carmichael indicates that Finance Minister Flaherty will be releasing new regulations on Principal Protected Notes. (You can read about PPNs at Canadian Securities Administrators’ website. You can also read about Structured Products, of which PPNs are […]

Hot Off the Web (May 4, 2008) Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick tackled the rising tide of inflation in two articles this past week. First in “Inflation is rising so pay down debt now” he warns that rising inflation will lead to rising interest rates in the coming years and he suggests that now it’s […]

Hot Off the Web Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick in “Fee-based accounts also subject to abuse” explains how fee-based compensation (i.e. based on some percent of the assets under management versus commissions on sale of investments), introduced as a means to eliminate conflict in objectives between investors and advisors, has not done the job. He […]

Hot Off the Web Financial Times’ Rebecca Knight in “Exchange traded funds gain a guiding hand”  quotes PowerShares’ Bruce Bond that introduction of active ETFs is a watershed event, as these will compete with other actively managed funds. PowerShares had to accept assorted restriction from the SEC because the conflict between ETFs requirement for daily […]

Hot Off the Web In WSJ’s “Some retirement assistance at no charge”  Glenn Fuffenach leads the reader to a number of good free web resources retirement planning and living. A couple of notable ones are: (1) T. Rowe Price Family Records Organizer , (2) Women’s Retirement Initiatives In a first of two articles (the second […]

Hot Off the Web Here is the somewhat abbreviated Hot Off the Web this week, as I was travelling for the last six days “on the slow train” from Florida to Ottawa via Savannah and NYC. Jennifer Levitz writes in the WSJ that “Americans delay retirement as housing, stocks swoon” . This shouldn’t come as […]

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. […]