Can ETFs provide downside protection?
We all want to capture most of the market's upside while significantly limiting losses. Unfortunately, it’s fantasy. [MoneySense]
Are your return expectations realistic?
An investor is frustrated because her portfolio is down in value. But is the advisor really to blame? [MoneySense]
What to do if you have too much in one stock
Nick is retiring with one-third of his investments in his employer's stock. What's the best way to diversify without taking a huge tax hit? [MoneySense]
Podcast 19: The Big Tradeoff
There’s a common theme in all three segments of Episode 19 of the podcast: the risk-return trade-off between stocks and bonds. This is hardly an original idea, but it remains one of the most important [...]
ETF Risks in Perspective: Securities Lending
This is the final post in a series of three looking at the potential risks that ETFs may pose to the stability of financial markets. The previous two discussed synthetic and leveraged ETFs. Now we’ll [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Swap-Based ETFs: What Are the Risks?
Monday's post discussed the inner workings of the two swap-based ETFs launched by Horizons in late 2010. Many investors are understandably concerned about the risks involved in these rather complicate [...]
Does Rebalancing Boost Returns?
Rebalancing your portfolio has two potential benefits. The first is that it helps control risk by keeping your asset allocation more or less consistent. The other advantage—assuming you have the disci [...]
