What Do You Want From Your Investments?
I recently had the opportunity to interview Meir Statman, author of the new book What Investors Really Want, and a professor of finance at Santa Clara University in California. Professor Statman is on [...]
Couch Potato on Ice
This week I was dismissive about the Dynamic Funds that swept this year’s Canadian Investment Awards. I argued that it’s easy to celebrate past performance, but impossible to identify managers whose s [...]
How to Avoid Paying Other People’s Taxes
Before you go shopping for the Couch Potatoes on your holiday wish list, be aware that December can be a terrible time to buy ETFs. No, it's not because of all the last-minute shoppers pushing and sho [...]
Tax-Loss Selling with Index Funds: Part 2
In my previous post, I looked at the Canada Revenue Agency’s position on tax-loss selling with ETFs. According to the only CRA bulletin on the subject, if you sell an index fund or ETF and claim a cap [...]
Tax-Loss Selling with Index Funds: Part 1
Now that we’re into December, many investors are turning their thoughts to skiing, holiday celebrations — and year-end taxes. If you’re investing in an RRSP, Tax-Free Savings Account, Registered Educa [...]
Please, No More Success Stories
Last Saturday’s Globe and Mail featured a story about a retired university professor who has enjoyed staggeringly good returns over the last decade. While chumps who invested in a Canadian index fund [...]
Ready, Willing and Able to Take Risk
Asset allocation is more art than science. There are no immutable laws to tell you what proportion of stocks and bonds should be in your portfolio. The best you can do is adopt rules of thumb. “Make y [...]
Rick Ferri’s Take on Gold
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Rick Ferri, founder of Portfolio Solutions, an investment management firm in Troy, Michigan. Rick is the author of several excellent books on ETFs, index f [...]
The 50-Percent Solution
Investing can seem so complicated. Building a portfolio can involve dozens of decisions, each of which seems terribly important. Here are a few that readers have mulled over recently, according to ema [...]
To Hedge or Not to Hedge
Last week I wrote about whether US-listed ETFs are really cheaper once you account for currency exchange fees, and then I looked at ways to reduce forex fees. The spreadsheet I created to compare US a [...]
