Alexander Green retired at age 43 after having made his fortune as an investment adviser, market analyst and portfolio manager. He thinks the efficient market hypothesis — one of the fundamental ideas behind the Couch Potato strategy — is bunk. “I have serious philosophical differences with those asset-allocators who recommend index funds because they believe [...]
You knew it was coming, and now it’s finally arrived: the first Canadian ETF that shorts the bond market. On June 29, the Claymore Inverse 10 Year Government Bond ETF (CIB) began trading on the TSX. The fund is designed to deliver the opposite of the daily return of 10-year Government of Canada bonds. In [...]
Most investors understand that you should have more exposure to stocks when you’re young and gradually allocate more to bonds and cash as you approach retirement. In their new book, Lifecycle Investing, Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff point out there’s a problem with that strategy—and they offer a solution. Ayres and Nalebuff believe in diversifying [...]
Both iShares and Claymore have announced that several of the their ETFs will start paying distributions monthly instead of quarterly. The announcements came within five days of each other earlier this month. It’s good to see the two biggest players in the ETF market pushing each other into improving their products. Here are the ETFs [...]
This week I got an email from a reader who is in the process of firing her advisor and becoming a Couch Potato. “I have decided it’s time to take matters into my own hands,” wrote Sarah. “I have $25,000 in mutual funds in my RRSP with my current adviser. I want to create a [...]
In yesterday’s post I looked at the recently launched BMO Equal Weight REITs Index ETF (ZRE), which invests in Canadian real estate investment trusts. The new ETF is going head-to-head with the iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index Fund (XRE), which until now had no competition in this space. The big difference between the two funds [...]
It looks like BMO has finally made a splash in the ETF market. Most of the bank’s family of exchange-traded funds, launched about a year ago, either duplicated existing products from iShares or focused on exotic asset classes. But they’ve changed that with the launch of BMO Equal Weight REITs Index ETF (ZRE) last month. [...]
It’s always interesting to know what the smart money is doing. And I’m not talking about the investment managers who appear on BNN to “talk their book” — like the guy who runs the precious metals fund and suggests you by precious metals. The smart money are the managers of pension and endowment funds worth [...]
This post is the third of three that outline nine critical factors in investment success, as identified by Keith Matthews, a portfolio manager with Tulett, Matthews & Associates in Montreal. 7. Most investment strategies don’t survive for long. Every year sees an explosion of new investment offerings, innovative strategies and brilliant managers promising big returns. [...]
This post is the second of three that outline nine critical factors in investment success, as identified by Keith Matthews, a portfolio manager with Tulett, Matthews & Associates in Montreal. 4. Value and small stocks outperform over time. Many investors look for opportunities in growth companies. But long-term data show that investments in value companies [...]
