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Personal Finance and Investments First a couple of wills/estate related articles: Terry McBride’s Financial Post piece “Outdated will can lead to legal issues” and Rachel Silverman’s WSJ article “Get an estate plan.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” […]
Hot Off the Web- October 10, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In Bloomberg’s “That retirement calculator may be lying to you” Carla Fried warns that before focusing on the seven figure output (required assets at retirement) you better check the return assumptions used in the calculator. Many calculators use a very optimistic default of 8% […]
Hot Off the Web- October 3, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In WSJ’s “Why buying on dips isn’t all it’s cracked up to be” Jason Zweig explains that even though it might seem counterintuitive “Buying on the dips might make you feel better, just as it feels good to go shopping when a department store […]
Hot Off the Web- September 26, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments In the WSJ’s “Do ‘alternative’ funds deliver?” Anne Tergesen reports that ‘alternative’ mutual funds attracted significant inflow of individual investor dollars, but calls their performance disappointing. ‘Alternatives’ are supposedly designed to outperform in times of high volatility using a mix of: long/short, hedging, derivatives, […]
Hot Off the Web- September 19, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments Preet Banerjee writes in the Globe and Mail’s “Not all the arrows are pointing down” writes that as correlations increase dramatically in market swoons people question the value of diversification. He reminds readers however that while it is true that just about every stock […]
Hot Off the Web- September 12, 2011 Personal Finance and Investments Preet Banerjee in WSJ’s “Capitalistic greed the downfall of fund performance”suggests that managers do have skill and “It’s clearly possible to beat the market, it’s just very hard to predict who will do it in the future. More than one study indicates that outperformance […]
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