Lessons From the Last Decade
This has been a scary few months in the markets, and nervous investors may be tempted to second-guess their strategy. If you’re an indexer, you may be starting to believe that it’s time to reposition [...]
Why Passive Investors Aren’t Really Lazy
A couple of weeks ago, Balance Junkie wrote a post called Why This Is No Market for Couch Potatoes. The main argument of the post—one that has been made many times before—is that passive investing is [...]
Why Do Index Funds Use Derivatives?
Earlier this week I described how several US and international equity index funds get their market exposure by using index futures rather than holding the stocks directly. This structure is partly a h [...]
Holding Your Bond Fund for the Duration
Bond index funds have a place in almost all portfolios, even in a low-rate environment. However, it’s important to match the right bond fund to your investment goals. To do that you need to know two i [...]
Will Rising Rates Really Clobber Bonds?
Investors are worrying about a lot of things these days, but the fear of rising interest rates remains near the top of the list. Not only are savings accounts and GICs yielding peanuts, but bond inves [...]
The Stock Picker’s Quest for Alpha
Among academics, the active-versus-passive debate often centres on mutual funds. But among DIY investors—who readily concede that mutual funds with high fees are unlikely to outperform an index strate [...]
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
I’ve never been shy about criticizing actively managed mutual funds, but I’m starting to think this debate is getting old. More than that, I feel like it’s driving a wedge between people who should be [...]
Ask the Spud: Can You Time the Markets?
Q. Have you ever done any calculations into the optimal time to purchase index funds or ETFs based on broad market indicators? I’m essentially talking about buying during market dips and corrections, [...]
Review: The House That Bogle Built
In 1951, a Princeton University student wrote a thesis about the mutual fund industry. “Funds can make no claim to superiority over the investment averages,” wrote the scholar, who would go on to crea [...]
More Swap Talk With Horizons
Here's part two of my interview with Jaime Purvis, Executive Vice-President, National Accounts, for Horizons ETFs. (See part one here.) In this conversation, we talked about some of the reasons why in [...]
