The Bond Dilemma
With interest rates poised to rise later this year, I’m getting a lot of emails and comments from readers who are wary about investing in bonds. There seem to be a lot of myths and misunderstandings a [...]
Put Your Assets in Their Place
Couch Potato investors hear a lot about asset allocation, but asset location is also an important consideration. Asset location refers to the type of account you use to hold the stocks, bonds, cash an [...]
Adding Gold to Your Portfolio
Unless you’ve been in a coma, you know that gold has been the hottest commodity of the last decade, quadrupling in value since 2000. That’s in US dollars, but even measured in loonies gold is up more [...]
The S&P 500 Effect
On Tuesday, February 16, Berkshire Hathaway will become part of the S&P 500, the most widely followed stock index in the world. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average is more famous, the S&P 5 [...]
Review: The Elements of Investing
Whenever people ask me where they can learn more about Couch Potato investing, I need to answer carefully. Two classic books are Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Charles Ellis’s Win [...]
Review: Rob Carrick’s Guide
Rob Carrick is one of a small number of journalists who stand up for individual investors in this country. If you’re not a regular reader of his columns in the Globe and Mail, I encourage you to star [...]
Should You Buy US-listed ETFs?
Jason, a reader of this blog, recently wrote to ask why an investor would want to invest in Canadian-listed  ETFs that hold US stocks when there are US versions with much lower fees. For example, the [...]
