Canadian Capitalist

The rapid growth of China is fuelling demand for Canada’s resources. Is this a threat (bypass registration here) or an opportunity? While increasing trade with China is desirable, outright Chinese control of Canadian resource companies is not. Unless the threat of Chinese ownership of resource companies is first addressed, Canada won’t be much of an [...]

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We don’t have kids (yet) but it is good to know about education savings plans available. There was a nice introduction in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star (bypass registration here).

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Canadians are allowed a maximum 30% foreign content inside their retirement (RRSP) accounts. A recent Royal Bank poll has revealed that 35% of RRSP portfolios have no foreign content at all and a mere 5% have achieved the maximum foreign-content limit. It is very important to diversify a portfolio with different asset classes including foreign [...]

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We are planning a vacation with significant air travel costs. I was able to get an itinerary of my choice and asked my agent to hold the booking for a week. I also phoned around and asked different travel agents for a “best price” on the same trip. One quote I got was $30 less, [...]

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Staying on the subject of taxes, Certified General Accountants of Ontario has an informative booklet titled Personal Tax Planning available in printed form at local libraries. It is also available online in HTML and PDF formats.

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Tax season is (almost) upon us (deadline is April 30, 2005). My wife and I have straightforward tax situations, so we always prepare our own taxes. We can either file a paper return or file electronically using CRA’s Netfile. We usually opt for the latter because it is less error-prone and we tend to get [...]

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Scott Burns, columnist for the Dallas Morning News and creator of the original couch potato portfolio, has posted the performance numbers of all his passive portfolios here. Check out the impressive performance of the Canadian version of the portfolio here and another “lazy portfolio” here. I think these passive portfolios work really well because they [...]

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There is a lively discussion going on in Seeking Alpha and Random Roger’s Big Picture on the merits of investing in dividend-paying stocks. Seeking Alpha’s David Jackson argues that dividends are inefficient in the sense that investors give up the compounding effect of earnings. I remember reading somewhere that Warren Buffet dislikes dividends for this [...]

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I am planning to add bonds (probably through the iUnits Canadian Bond Index fund) to my portfolio this year precisely for the reasons outlined in this CNN Money column. I want to reduce my portfolio volatility while being aware that there is a chance for bonds to under perform this year.

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Newspapers in Canada widely reported on a recent TD Bank study that real after-tax income has barely budged in 15 years. The report lays most of the blame on rising income taxes and Canada Pension Plan contributions and calls for an action plan for increasing productivity, cutting taxes and investing in education.While the report focuses [...]

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