Inside the DFA Global Balanced Fund
Long-time readers will know that I’ve written before about Dimensional Fund Advisors, an innovative investment firm that builds low-cost, widely diversified funds. I enjoy keeping an eye on DFA, becau [...]
What’s Next for iShares?
Back in January, BlackRock—the parent company of iShares—announced that it had acquired Claymore Investments, the second-largest ETF provider in Canada. Since then, BlackRock has been gradually integr [...]
Claymore ETFs Get Rebranded
BlackRock surprised almost everyone in January by announcing that it would be buying Claymore Investments, the second-largest ETF provider in Canada. The move takes another step forward today when the [...]
Inside Morningstar’s New Strategy Indexes
On Monday, I wrote a post about a new Canadian dividend fund from XTF Capital. That fund is one of five new products from the newest ETF provider in the country, all of which are based on indexes prov [...]
Tax-Efficient Investing With ETFs
If you’re investing outside of tax-sheltered accounts like RRSPs and TFSAs, you need to choose your investments carefully—otherwise you risk giving a big slice of your returns to the good people at th [...]
Vanguard Drops the Gloves
It’s not easy to make a splash in the crowded ETF space these days. Many of the new products we’ve seen in the last year or so have been clones of existing ETFs or exotic specialty funds. Any Canadian [...]
More Swap Talk With Horizons
Here's part two of my interview with Jaime Purvis, Executive Vice-President, National Accounts, for Horizons ETFs. (See part one here.) In this conversation, we talked about some of the reasons why in [...]
Understanding Swap-Based ETFs
Last fall, Horizons Exchange Traded Funds launched two innovative new ETFs. Rather than simply holding the stocks in the indexes they track, these funds use a derivative called a “swap” to get exposur [...]
Letting You In On a Big Secret
Joel Greenblatt has a sense of humour—I’ll grant him that. In The Big Secret for the Small Investor (Wiley, 2011), he pokes fun at the crass title of his previous book, You Can Be a Stock Market Geniu [...]
Fundamental Indexing for Corporate Bonds
On Monday, I took issue with the argument that cap-weighted bond indexes are fatally flawed. Rob Arnott, the creator of fundamental indexing, has argued that the classic model is “patently ridiculous. [...]
