Review: Millionaire Teacher
It’s hard not to respect Andrew Hallam. I first learned about him in the pages of MoneySense, where he described how his investment club (made up of fellow teachers) had beaten the S&P 500 year af [...]
ETF Risks in Perspective: Leveraged ETFs
This post is the second of three that will look at the potential risks that ETFs may pose to the stability of financial markets. Last week I discussed synthetic ETFs, which use derivatives called swap [...]
ETF Risks in Perspective: Synthetic ETFs
Not so long ago, ETFs were simple and transparent. But with the tremendous growth in the industry, ETFs have not only become more numerous, but also more complex and opaque. A number of influential bo [...]
How ETFs Came Under Fire
ETFs are on the hot seat these days. On Wednesday, a US Senate subcommittee held a hearing to consider the idea that ETFs are contributing to volatility and instability in the financial markets. This [...]
Couch Potatoes: Not the Next Financial Time Bomb
I would have been kicked out of journalism school for writing this: “The culprit behind the epidemic of death on our roads is clear: drunk drivers. There are more than 21 million of these in Canada to [...]
What Moneyball Can Teach You About Investing
I can’t seem to get my kids interested in index investing, but they do share my love of baseball. So last week I took my daughter to see Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name. She [...]
Why Staying the Course Isn’t “Doing Nothing”
On Tuesday I linked to a poll of some 200 institutional investors who were asked about their outlook for global equity markets. The smart money seems to be evenly split between buyers, sellers, holder [...]
So Much For the Consensus View
The Canadian stock market officially crossed into bear market territory this week, falling to more than 20% below its April high. We’ve already endured five consecutive months of negative returns and [...]
When Should You Use an Advisor?
Dan Solin’s excellent new book, The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own (see my review here), devotes several chapters to whether passive investors should work with an advisor. It’s a question I’ve con [...]
Review: The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own
There comes a time in every Couch Potato’s life when he or she has to answer a nagging question: can I do better? Sure, the three or four plain-vanilla funds in the Global Couch Potato have an excelle [...]
