Why Jane shouldn’t cash out on stock crash fears
Modest corrections are going to happen many times during your retirement, and you don’t want to be worrying about every one of them. [MoneySense]
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 knife, fork and spoon that all fold into a single unit. It was hardly ideal for eating, especially if [...]
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 stocks, preferred shares, and real estate investment trusts (REITs), but I switched to [...]
Is a Pullback Really a Buying Opportunity?
The Canadian, US and international markets all fell more than 5% last week, the sharpest weekly drop we’ve seen in almost four years. Then on August 24, global markets plunged even further. If you wer [...]
The Folly of Forecasts
The new year has arrived, which means hangovers, doomed resolutions to lose weight, and a host of forecasts from the gurus in the financial media. I’m not sure which will cause more suffering. The att [...]
Three Reasons to Ignore Market Downturns
“Long-term investors shouldn’t worry about daily or weekly blips in the markets.” How many times have you heard that? It’s true of course, but most investors don’t heed the advice. And to be fair, it’ [...]
Do You Really Know Your Risk Tolerance?
Almost 75 years after it was written, Fred Schwed’s Where are the Customers' Yachts? remains one of the most entertaining books ever written about the investment industry. Here’s one of its best remem [...]
Why Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect in Investing
In almost everything we do—whether it’s learning the violin, playing chess or excelling in sports—practice makes us better. In his bestselling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the “10,000 h [...]
How One Investor Found Inner Peace
Most people who embrace index investing are attracted to the low fees and the proven performance compared with a majority of active strategies. But another advantage sometimes gets overlooked, and tha [...]
When the Smart Money Does Dumb Things
Investors can a learn a lot from pension funds, particularly when it comes to diversification, risk management and long-term thinking. But it seems professional money managers are not immune from the [...]