The Failed Promise of Market Timing
I’ve long believed the most difficult part of being a Couch Potato investor is resisting temptation. Index investors are asked to be content with market returns, but they are bombarded daily by fund c [...]
I’ve long believed the most difficult part of being a Couch Potato investor is resisting temptation. Index investors are asked to be content with market returns, but they are bombarded daily by fund c [...]
It's been a marvellous year for equities, but 2013 has not been kind to real estate investment trusts. Like other income-producing investments, REITs are sensitive to rising interest rates, and the sh [...]
If the evidence in favour of passive investing is so strong, why isn’t the strategy more popular? I hear that question all the time, and there are several answers, including effective marketing by inv [...]
Q: Under what specific circumstances would it be better to hold a US-listed ETF if there is a Canadian equivalent? For example, when it is preferable to use the Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) rathe [...]
[This post was updated in February 2015 to reflect recent changes at some brokerages.] Norbert’s gambit remains the least expensive way to convert Canadian and US dollars at a discount brokerage. For [...]
Deferred sales charges (DSCs) may have been the mutual fund industry’s greatest marketing innovation. Back in the 1980s, it wasn’t unusual for funds to be sold with front-end loads of 5% or more. Then [...]
Trading commissions get a lot of attention from ETF investors, and rightly so. But depending which ETFs you use and the size of your trades, the impact of bid-ask spreads may be larger than you though [...]
ETFs are generally more tax-efficient than mutual funds, but there is one area where they’re at a disadvantage. Investors who use non-registered accounts can take advantage of corporate class mutual f [...]
The mutual fund industry loves to sell past performance, and it's not above massaging the data to make that performance look even better. But every now and then an advertisement appears that sets the [...]
Monday’s post about factor analysis was, I admit, too technical for most readers’ tastes. At least that’s the conclusion I drew when the two most enthusiastic comments came from a professor of statist [...]