It’s Better With Beta
The title of Larry Swedroe’s latest book, The Incredible Shrinking Alpha, raises a question: what happened to the idea that skilled managers can consistently beat the market? In a recent interview wit [...]
Is Beating the Market Harder Than Ever?
Is beating the market harder than it’s ever been? Larry Swedroe thinks so, and he lays out his case in his newest book, The Incredible Shrinking Alpha. PWL Capital has just published a custom edition [...]
Ask the Spud: My ETF Is Shutting Down
Q: I received a notice that an ETF I own will be closed within the next few months. Is it better to sell it now or wait until the termination date? – S.H. ETFs are now available for just about every n [...]
How Contributions Affect Your Rate of Return
Whenever I update the returns of my model portfolios, readers ask how the performance would have been different had they added money to the portfolios money each month. This question gets to the heart [...]
Calculating Your Portfolio’s Rate of Return
Perhaps no number is more important to investors than the rate of return on their portfolio. Yet this seemingly simple calculation is fraught with problems. If you’ve made contributions or withdrawals [...]
Raining on the All Seasons Portfolio
Investors are hungry for success stories, especially tales that include high returns with low risk. And the investment industry is always happy to stoke that appetite. One of the most popular stories [...]
China Grabs a Bigger Share of the Indexes
Traditional international index funds assign a weight to each country based on the size of its stock market. But in the case of China, that’s a bit misleading. Despite having the world’s second-larges [...]
Vanguard’s VXC Gets a Facelift
The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex Canada (VXC) allows Canadians to get access to US, international and emerging markets equities with a single ETF, and it’s one of the ingredients in my model portfolios. [...]
How Bad Data Leads to Poor Investment Decisions
Making smart investment decisions is difficult enough when you have reliable information. If you're working with inaccurate or misleading data, good decisions become almost impossible. The most popula [...]
How Changing Interest Rates Affect Fixed Income
It’s been a tough few months for bonds. Since early February, the yield on Government of Canada five-year bonds has climbed from 0.59% to about 1.07%, and 10-year bonds yielding 1.24% have ticked up t [...]
