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complete guide to index investing
ETFs & Funds
The Promise of Fundamental Indexing
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Rob Arnott, the creator of the Research ...
Under the Hood: Vanguard Total International Stock (VXUS)
This post is part of a series called Under the Hood, where l take a detailed look at ...
Tim Pickering on Managed Futures, Part 1
On Monday I wrote about managed futures, a strategy that can add a layer of diversification to a ...
Inside the Horizons One-Ticket ETFs
Are asset allocation ETFs cheap, well-diversified and convenient? Absolutely. Are they optimally tax-efficient? Perhaps not, though any tax ...
ETF Risks in Perspective: Leveraged ETFs
This post is the second of three that will look at the potential risks that ETFs may pose ...
Understanding Swap-Based ETFs
Last fall, Horizons Exchange Traded Funds launched two innovative new ETFs. Rather than simply holding the stocks in ...
Indexing Basics
Can You Have Too Much Diversification?
Is it possible for a portfolio to be too diversified? There are certainly a lot of articles making ...
Another Reason to Distrust the Fund Industry
I recently had a chance to interview Ken Kivenko, who runs Canadian Fund Watch and is allied with ...
Letting You In On a Big Secret
Joel Greenblatt has a sense of humour—I’ll grant him that. In The Big Secret for the Small Investor ...
Couch Potato Portfolio Returns for 2019
The numbers are in and no one is shooting the messenger this year. If 2018 was disappointment—returns were negative ...
Indexing’s Dirty Little Secret
“Most actively managed mutual funds underperform the market.” Couch Potato investors sing this refrain all the time in ...
A Spreadsheet to Manage Multiple Accounts
You’ve got an RRSP with your employer, another with a discount brokerage, and your spouse has a couple ...
Financial Planning
What Is the Advisor’s Role?
John Lawrence Reynolds' newest book, The Skeptical Investor, argues that Canadians were badly served by their advisors during ...
A Monte Carlo Case Study: Can I Retire Early?
Last week’s post about Monte Carlo simulations in financial planning sparked some interesting comments, so I thought a ...
Why Plans Should Come Before Products
When I wrote the MoneySense Guide to the Perfect Portfolio [now out of print], I waited until Chapter ...
Ask the Spud: Is My Pension Like a Bond?
Q: My wife and I have been using the Couch Potato strategy for a few years now, but ...
It’s Time to Ban Advisor Commissions
Should financial advisors be banned from collecting commissions on mutual funds? That’s been hotly debated for years, and ...
Ask the Spud: Am I Vulnerable to US Estate Taxes?
Q: I am ready to follow the Couch Potato and would like to use the US-listed Vanguard ETFs ...
Behavioural Finance
Why RESPs Should Be Kept Simple
In the last couple of weeks I’ve received two questions from readers who were trying to figure out ...
Cost Versus Convenience in “ex Canada” ETFs
I used to own one of those one-piece cutlery tools designed for hiking and camping—the kind with a ...
Why Simple Is Still a Hard Sell
Last January, I overhauled my model portfolios to make them simpler. Some of the older options included small-cap ...
Podcast 20: One-Stop ETF Shopping
I’ve always tried to stress that successful investing is about the right process, not the right products. But ...
Should You Buy Stocks For Your Kids?
If you’re a parent, how can you set your child on the road to investing success? One popular ...
Podcast 25: Dr. Steve Wendel on Investor Success
The latest episode of the Canadian Couch Potato podcast features an interview with Dr. Stephen Wendel, Head of ...
Portfolio Management
How to Set Up a Hands-Off ETF Portfolio
For DIY investors, asset allocation ETFs may be the greatest gift to come along in decades. It’s never ...
It’s Time to Reboot Your Portfolio
It’s been a while since the last new article appeared on the Canadian Couch Potato blog, and over ...
A New Rebalancing Spreadsheet for ETFs
It’s easy enough to build an index fund portfolio with your desired mix of stocks and bonds. But ...
TD e-Series Returns for 2020
The TD e-Series index mutual funds remain a useful alternative to the asset allocation ETFs that take centre ...
Ask the Spud: Can I Make Taxable Investing Easier?
In Episode 4 of the Canadian Couch Potato podcast, I answered the following question from a listener named ...
Is VRIF Right for Your Portfolio?
In my last few posts, I introduced the newly launched Vanguard Retirement Income ETF Portfolio (VRIF), explained where ...
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