Canadian Capitalist

I am buying some more Home Depot (NYSE: HD) for my retirement account. The company needs no introduction. It is a Dow component and most home owners spend a good chunk of their home maintenance budget at their stores. I am planning on making the stock a core holding at roughly 6% of my portfolio [...]

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Columnist Paul B. Farrell tracks four “lazy” portfolios and has added a fifth to his collection: The Yale Lazy Portfolio. The portfolio is from David Swensen’s book Unconventional Success. Like all “lazy” portfolios, it is made up of low-cost index funds and the allocation is as follows:
US Equity: 30%
International: 20%
REITs: 20%
Bonds/TIPS: 30%
The high REIT allocation [...]

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Experts point out that it makes no financial sense in buying a brand new car that depreciates 50% or more in the first few years. We literally tend to pay through the nose for that new car smell.
Now, it turns out, in addition to damaging our pocketbook, that smell could also be dangerous to our [...]

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I will be hosting the 16th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance next week. Bloggers, send your submissions to ccapitalist-[at]-yahoo-[dot]-ca with the following information:

Name of your blog.
Title of your post.
The URL of your post entry.
A short summary of your entry.

Entry deadline is 5 P.M. Eastern on Sunday, October 2, 2005. I will be [...]

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This month’s Trade by Numbers issue (from The Globe and Mail) features columns on investing in technology. Rob Carrick recommends ETFs like the QQQQ though he wonders if the sector is worth owning at all. Other columnists write about the train wreck that is World Heart, a cryptography software company called Certicom, a company that [...]

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With recent additions to our family, our 92 Honda Accord is starting to feel very cramped even during short family outings. So, I have started shopping for a van that fits the following criteria:

Clean, well-maintained Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna
Recent model with 50k - 100k clicks
Private sale, so that I pay only [...]

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It only took a terse announcement from Ottawa that it will suspend providing advance tax rulings to companies considering converting to an income trust for the trust mania to turn into panic. In two days since the ruling, CI Funds (TSX: CIX), CanWest Global (TSX: CGS.SV), GMP Capital Corp (TSX: GMP), all companies that intended [...]

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I’ve been a customer of ING Direct for many years and have been very impressed with their no-fee, no-frills, high-interest rate accounts. However, I now think that upstart ICICI Bank offers a much better value, so I am considering moving our savings accounts.
Savings Account: 2.75% (ICICI Bank) vs. 2.40% (ING Direct)US Dollar Savings Account: 3.00% [...]

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A Toronto Star column expresses outrage over the wireless industry’s go-slow policy on implementing number portability. The column quotes a telecom consultancy: “Canada was supposed to be a world leader in communications — yet we can’t manage to let a customer keep her telephone number as she changes providers? We are already competing for last [...]

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A recent report from CIBC paints a grim picture of the savings habits of Canadians (According to Statistics Canada, the current personal savings rate of Canadians is -0.5%). There are many factors that may seem to explain the steep drop in the personal savings rate ranging from the “wealth-effect” of the strong housing market to [...]

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