Hot Off the Web- February 6, 2012 Personal Finance and Investments In Vanguard’s “Recessions and balanced portfolio returns” the authors write that “we calculated the historical returns of a balanced 50% equity/50% bond portfolio under two distinct U.S. business-cycle regimes: recessions and expansions. We show that the average real returns of such a portfolio since […]
Hot Off the Web- January 30, 2012 Personal Finance and Investments In the WSJ’s “Can you sum up your investing philosophy in 10 words?” Jason Zweig provides his answer and some answers provided by a few prominent investors: “Anything is possible, and the unexpected is inevitable. Proceed accordingly.” (Zweig), “If everybody wants it, I don’t. […]
Hot Off the Web- January 23, 2012 Personal Finance and Investments In the Globe and Mail’s “Your portfolio performance needs a regular check-up” Tom Bradley writes that “Ideally, investors should construct personalized indexes. This default portfolio, or benchmark, would blend the returns from various market indexes in proportion to their particular long-term asset mixes (cash, […]
Hot Off the Web- January 16, 2012 Personal Finance and Investments In WSJ’s “Does total freedom boost returns?” Karen Damato discusses tactical asset allocation (TAA) funds where managers have leeway to move money between asset classes (e.g. stock funds, bond funds, cash, real estate and commodities) in the hope of avoiding or minimizing the impact […]
Hot Off the Web- January 9, 2012 Personal Finance and Investments In WSJ’s “How to build your financial dream team”Karen Blumenthal defines her financial Trust Team as a combination good estate lawyer, accountant and financial adviser. For an adviser she suggests credentials such as CFA, CFP or CPA. In addition (unlike stockbrokers, insurance and mutual […]
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 […]
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