How ETFs Came Under Fire
ETFs are on the hot seat these days. On Wednesday, a US Senate subcommittee held a hearing to consider the idea that ETFs are contributing to volatility and instability in the financial markets. This [...]
ETFs are on the hot seat these days. On Wednesday, a US Senate subcommittee held a hearing to consider the idea that ETFs are contributing to volatility and instability in the financial markets. This [...]
I would have been kicked out of journalism school for writing this: “The culprit behind the epidemic of death on our roads is clear: drunk drivers. There are more than 21 million of these in Canada to [...]
I can’t seem to get my kids interested in index investing, but they do share my love of baseball. So last week I took my daughter to see Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name. She [...]
On Tuesday I linked to a poll of some 200 institutional investors who were asked about their outlook for global equity markets. The smart money seems to be evenly split between buyers, sellers, holder [...]
The Canadian stock market officially crossed into bear market territory this week, falling to more than 20% below its April high. We’ve already endured five consecutive months of negative returns and [...]
Dan Solin’s excellent new book, The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own (see my review here), devotes several chapters to whether passive investors should work with an advisor. It’s a question I’ve con [...]
There comes a time in every Couch Potato’s life when he or she has to answer a nagging question: can I do better? Sure, the three or four plain-vanilla funds in the Global Couch Potato have an excelle [...]
Let’s end the week with one final post about the Permanent Portfolio. Many readers expressed interest in this strategy, introduced by Harry Browne in the early 1980s. I’ve spent so much time on the Pe [...]
In series of posts last week, I looked at Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio, which includes a hefty 25% allocation to gold. The reason for holding such a large amount, Browne argued, is that gold pro [...]
The Permanent Portfolio is an investment strategy created in the early 1980s by Harry Browne. It calls for investors to hold equal amounts of stocks, long-term government bonds, gold and cash. I recen [...]