Are We In a Secular Bear Market?
If you’ve spent any time at a cottage this summer, away from the bright city lights, you’ve probably enjoyed some beautiful views of the Milky Way. Astronomers believe that our galaxy is a barred spir [...]
Tim Pickering on Managed Futures, Part 2
Here's part two of my interview with Tim Pickering, president of Auspice Capital Advisors, who manages both the Horizons Auspice Managed Futures Index ETF (HMF) and the iShares Broad Commodity Index F [...]
Can You Have Too Much Diversification?
Is it possible for a portfolio to be too diversified? There are certainly a lot of articles making that claim. Investopedia even has one called The Dangers of Over-Diversifying Your Portfolio that con [...]
Ask the Spud: Does Home Bias Ever Make Sense?
Q: The Global Couch Potato has one-third of the equity allocation in Canadian stocks, but Canada makes up only about 4% of the world markets. Aren’t you guilty of home country bias? – Jeremy D. I’m ac [...]
Market Timing Goes to College
In recent years, the so-called Yale Model has been extremely popular with investors. The model is an attempt to mimic the investment strategy used by Ivy League endowment funds, which have an outstand [...]
Is the Market Overvalued? Depends Who You Ask
Critics of index investing often argue that the strategy is not sensitive to valuation. They feel that a simple strategy of buy, hold and rebalance is folly: there are times when the market is cheap o [...]
Ask the Spud: Investing With Multiple Accounts
Q: How do I use the Couch Potato strategy across multiple accounts? We have a taxable investment account, my RRSP, a spousal RRSP and two TFSAs (one for me, and one for my spouse). Should we hold all [...]
Market Forecasts Prove Worthless—Again
I’m confused by a lot of things in investing, but the enduring influence of market forecasts is the one that stumps me the most. Year after year, expert predictions, estimates, forecasts and projectio [...]
Does the Couch Potato Work After Age 50?
Readers often ask me whether the Couch Potato strategy is suitable for investors  approaching retirement, or even those who have stopped working. In his recent book, Retirement’s Harsh New Realities, [...]
Why You Should Beware of First Dates
Imagine that you’re the marketing director for MegaAlpha Investments and you want to advertise two of your mutual funds. In the September 2011 issue of Performance Chaser magazine, you place the follo [...]
