Hot Off the Web– December 20, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Perkins and Robertson in the Globe and Mail’s “Through Canada’s insurance loophole” describe how “The regular checks and balances that are designed to oversee an insurance agent had failed.” Over the past twenty years the in most instances to historical oversight provided by insurance […]

Hot Off the Web– December 13, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the NYT’s “How to avoid being taken in a Ponzi scheme” Paul Sullivan says that “Sadly, the people who are most likely to involve you in a swindle are friends and relatives. It has become so common that it now has its own […]

Hot Off the Web– December 6, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Avner Mandelman in the Globe and Mail’s “Looking to invest in a back-tested fund? Don’t” explains why you should not put much faith in funds touting so called “back-tested strategies (“Back-testing involves simulating what would have happened in years gone by if the manager […]

Hot Off the Web– November 22, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In a must read article, Burton Malkiel’s WSJ “’Buy and hold’ is still a winner”he explains why the ‘buy-and-hold’ obit writers are just the latest of a long line of misguided souls. “While no one can time the market, two timeless techniques can help.”Dollar-cost […]

Hot Off the Web– November 15, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Globe and Mail’s “Families come out ahead when they share tax liability” Tim Cestnick continues his previous week’s article with more ways to income split, such as: (1) gift of cash or securities (equivalent to disposition) to adult family members (other than […]

Hot Off the Web– November 8, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In a Journal of Financial Planning interview “Retirement investing, withdrawals, and tax efficiency”William Reichenstein suggests ways to adding value with tax efficient withdrawals. Some of the suggested mechanism(aimed at U.S. based readers, but no doubt many aspects also applicable in the Canadian context) are: […]

Hot Off the Web– November 1, 2010           Personal Finance and Investments     Eleanor Laise in the WSJ’s “New ways to create a gold-plated pension” discusses a move from a returns chasing approach toward liability-driven investing (LDI), whereby much like pensions are supposed to do (but don’t always do) assets […]

Hot Off the Web– October 25, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In Tim Cestnick’s Globe and Mail article “Deducting mortgage interest takes a fortitude many lack”he explores the so called “Smith Manoeuvre” which “essentially involves slowly converting your non-deductible mortgage payments into deductible interest payments on a loan used to fund an investment portfolio” (even […]

Hot Off the Web– October 18, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Christopher Condon discusses ETF originators’ competition in Bloomberg’s “Vanguard chips away at BlackRock (iShares), State Street in ETF price war”. After a late start in the ETF business, Vanguard is closing the asset gap with fees about half of those of BlackRock and other […]