Hot Off the Web- December 19, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the WSJ’s “How to pay your financial adviser”Daisy Maxey writes that the good news is that: “You have more options than ever for paying your financial adviser. The bad news? It’s even tougher to figure out if you’re getting the best deal for […]

Hot Off the Web- December 12, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Globe and Mail, Shirley Won reports that “Vanguard rolls out first six Canadian traded ETFs”. Vanguard’s Canadian ETFs can be viewed at VanguardCanada.ca. Note that while all the ETFs are in CAD, some but not all non-Canadian securities based ones are hedged […]

Hot Off the Web- December 5, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Journal of Financial Planning’s “The tyranny of compounding fees: Are mutual funds bleeding retirement accounts dry?”(The answer is absolutely…YES!) Stewart Neufeld shows that: “The financial services industry share of market returns increases with the length of investment period. For annual performance lags […]

Hot Off the Web- November 28, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Post’s “Charles Ellis to Canadian portfolio managers: fees must come down” Jonathan Chevreau quotes Charles Ellis (author of the must read “Winning the Loser’s Game- Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing”) as follows: industry should abandon “the futile quest to “beat” the […]

Hot Off the Web- November 21, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Times’ “Indices- playing the weighting game” Steve Johnson discusses index construction and mentions that the S&P 500 equally weighted index (0.2% allocated to each of the 500 components) that has $3.9B invested in it has outperformed the capitalization weighted index with […]

Hot Off the Web- November 14, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the WSJ’s “Taking bird in hand is tempting with market bushes” Catey Hill’s concerns about high priced variable annuity products which deliver the (nominal) downside protection, but have very little chance of upside opportunity are well founded, yet more and more money is […]

Hot Off the Web- November 7, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Times’ “There is no such thing as certainty”  Jane Fuller discusses the pursuit of the Holy Grail of ‘simple’ investment/financial products. Simplicity, she writes, that depending on your perspective, could mean ‘simplicity of outcome’ like annuities or some flavour of other […]

Hot Off the Web- October 31, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the U.S. Vanguard has announced a GLWB (Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit) plan that can be attached as a rider (current annual cost of 0.95%) to their variable annuity offerings (total costs in the range of 0.5-0.6%). Guaranteed withdrawal rates are 4.5-6.5% depending on […]

Hot Off the Web- October 24, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments First a couple of wills/estate related articles: Terry McBride’s Financial Post piece “Outdated will can lead to legal issues” and Rachel Silverman’s WSJ article “Get an estate plan. Now”.  The former explains the importance of having an updated will, otherwise: the executor might have […]

Hot Off the Web- October 17, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Post’s “Don’t sabotage your own portfolio”Michael Nairne advises readers to: “quit checking your investment accounts online every day…quit comparing the value of your portfolio now with its value when the stock market peaked earlier this year…quit dichotomizing your portfolio into “winners” […]