Archives
blog16sep2007
Hot Off the Web First, there were a couple of interesting articles on Florida’s discriminatory two-tier property tax front; one is potential good news and the other, is bad news materializing, as expected. BusnessWeek’s “Shaky times for munis” reports that the U.S Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the State of […]
blog09sep2007
Hot Off the Web This is a somewhat belated September 9th blog, as we got in after midnight last night from a week in the magnificent Canadian Rockies. We got in lots of great scenery, food and hiking! In Financial Post’s “Use your home’s equity, but don’t forget the debt” , Jonathan Chevreau discusses the […]
blog02sep2007
Hot Off the Web WSJ’s Ruffenach in “Don’t count on your house for retirement” reports that in a California area survey, 68% of 60 year olds were counting their home as part of their retirement assets. He suggests that this is not a good strategy, not just because real estate prices are now falling, but […]
blog27aug2007
Hot Off the Web Financial Post’s Richard Croft in “Picking the right benchmark” tables the importance of benchmarks in investing (you can read more about it at this website at Benchmarks ). He gives two reasons for their importance: comparison with a passive alternative and because of focus on portfolio rather than individual securities. He […]
Good(?) news, mutual funds perform better in recessions than expansions
Good(?) news, mutual funds perform better in recessions than expansions Before we get to the good(?) news let’s run through what we know about mutual funds: 1. Studies have shown that actively managed mutual funds have a structural disadvantage as compared to index funds or (index) ETFs. The mutual fund manager must overcome the […]
Want the greatest bang for the buck from your advisor?
Want the greatest bang for the buck from your advisor? Last week, Good(?) news, mutual funds perform better in recessions than expansions , discussed how difficult it is for active managers to exceed the index and how difficult it is to find the few who will outperform in the future. If it appears that it […]
blog19aug2007
Hot Off the Web The debate continues on whether “Tweaks in index that boost gains” actually add any net after fees value. A Morningstar study showed that enhanced index based mutual funds trailed the performance the traditional cap-weighted index funds. Interestingly, another study showed that institutional enhanced index funds have somewhat outperformed the traditional indexes. […]
blog12aug2007
Hot Off the Web ETF’s are becoming popular not just with do it yourself investors, but also with advisors. In WSJ’s “All ETF portfolio: Pros reveal the ins and outs” Core holdings include S&P500 SPDR (SPY) combined with MSCI EAFE index (EFA). The core holdings of some are evolving to using S&P Equal (rather than […]
blog05aug2007
Hot Off the Web In “Snowbirds’ Florida Tax Crisis” The Canadian Snowbird Association Magazine’s Summer Edition (pp.18-19) contains an article written by yours truly. Florida’s property tax system has been called loony, outrageous, two-tier, discriminatory, confiscatory and worse. The bottom line is that Florida has a property tax system that is rigged against snowbirds and […]
Life settlements
Life Settlements (Beware!) We have discussed previously reverse mortgages as a source of expensive money that an individual could tap to enhance their income in retirement. An even more expensive source of funds (or risky investment vehicle for an investor) is a life or seniors settlement. Viatical settlements, precursor product, were focused at people whose […]
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