Hot Off the Web– May 4, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments WSJ’s Brett Arends tables “Four lessons from the Goldman case” for the readers and reminds them that “for many big financial institutions on Wall Street (or Bay Street), we’re simply customers to be sold a product”. The four lessons are: (1) be skeptical/cautious when […]

Hot Off the Web– April 27, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Jason Zweig in the WSJ’s “Full disclosure: Most risks hide in plain sight” argues that while “full and proper” disclosure is necessary, it is still insufficient for many investors to make an “informed decision”. The reasons are related to: too much information reduces ability […]

Hot Off the Web– April 20, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Jonathan Chevreau in the Financial Post’s “Ten timeless investing wisdoms” lists Vancouver advisor’s timeless wisdoms to successful long-term investing. Among them are: (1) the unthinkable does happen, (2) prepare and stick to your long-term plan, (3) diversify, (4) understand all the fees and (5) […]

Hot Off the Web– April 13, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Terrence Belford’s Financial Post article entitled “Financial freedom” describes reverse mortgage taken out by a couple in their early 70s as a “wonderful windfall”. With a 3.75% rate they received a $143,000 representing 40% of the home appraised at $375,000. However, there are a […]

Hot Off the Web- April 4, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Tom Bradley, in the Globe and Mail’s “It’s not a question of whether to invest- but how”, writes that the most important piece of the investment puzzle is “a long-term strategic asset mix” which “takes into account their objectives, time horizon and tolerance for […]

Hot Off the Web– March 29, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Times’ “Reveal the ‘true cost’ of the croupier’s take” Jonathan Davis writes about the lesser known cousin of the ‘efficient markets hypothesis’, named ‘costs matter hypothesis’. “Like death and taxes, which are anything but hypothetical, fund costs are one of nature’s […]

Hot Off the Web– March 23, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Journal of Financial Planning magazine’s “Unsafe at any speed? The designed-in risk of target-date glide-paths”Zvi Bodie et al say that despite the fact that U.S. Department of Labor allows target-date funds as an investment default in 401(k), their recent poor performance has […]

Hot Off the Web- March 16, 2010 Personal Finance and investments In the Financial Post’s “Loonie surge triggers hedging” Eric Lam discusses hedging of the rising Canadian dollar. (In retrospect, this would have been a great idea 12-15 months ago when the Canadian dollar was trading in the low-80s relative to the U.S. dollar, however […]

Hot Off the Web- March 9, 2010 Personal Finance and investments In the NYT’s “Learning how to hedge yourself, and not just your portfolio”Paul Sullivan discusses the difference between human capital (HC i.e. earning power) and financial capital (FC i.e. assets), and the importance of insuring adequate diversification and even hedging to protect one’s overall […]

Hot Off the Web- March 1, 2010 Personal Finance and investments Brett Arends in WSJ’s “Buffett’s advice for the rest of us”summarizes some of the key elements of Buffett’s advice: (1) stay liquid (always have more than enough cash to meet expected requirements), (2) buy when everyone is selling, (3) ”don’t buy when everyone is […]