Canadian Capitalist

Robert Kiyosaki claims in his column on Yahoo! Finance that only amateurs diversify and professional investors should instead focus their investments. He even quotes Warren Buffett on the subject. Fair enough. But, the last time I checked there are just a handful of investors who are as successful as Mr. Buffett and there are probably [...]

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Forbes magazine is listing the 40 largest companies in Canada according to their methodology. No surprises here. The 5 big banks, 2 insurance companies, 2 energy companies and 1 telecom round out the top 10 list.
I am currently reading The Investment Zoo, so I read this interview with Jarislowsky Fraser with great interest. The recipe [...]

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The finance ministry is very concerned about real or imagined leakages involving taxes in the income trust sector. It should, however, be really concerned about who (if any) leaked and who (if any) benefited from the information about the impending favourable decisions regarding trusts last week.
The decision to cut dividends and income trusts was announced [...]

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“Potentially significant tax implications” is one of the reasons Ralph Goodale gave for his decision to launch public consultations into the income trust sector. His proposal to enact a dividend tax-cut does make dividends more attractive an after-tax basis.
However, for tax-exempt entities such as pension funds, income trusts are still very attractive. Consider a corporation [...]

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Ralph Goodale is likely to revisit his recent decision not to tax income trusts.

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In an earlier post, I complained that while discount brokerage commissions have fallen sharply in the United States, Canadian discount brokers continue to charge fat commissions. E*Trade is promising to provide some welcome competition by sharply cutting commissions for both Canadian and U.S. equity transactions. Effective January 10, 2006, E*Trade will charge a minimum of [...]

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I started blogging about personal finance matters exactly one year ago with a post on Aeroplan miles. The blog has come a long way since then: more than 250 posts, over 22,000 visitors and my 15 microseconds of fame on The Toronto Star and MoneySense.ca.
I would like to sincerely thank my readers for [...]

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I received a query from a reader about how to open a no-fee (or low-cost) RRSP account that provides a good selection of mutual funds. I thought I would expand my answer into a blog post.
If you want the flexibility to trade stocks and bonds, a RRSP account can be opened with any of the [...]

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A column in The New York Times takes a humourous look at the proliferation of “millionaire” books. Just consider the success of these books: The Millionaire Next Door, The Automatic Millionaire, The Millionaire Mind, The One Minute Millionaire, Cracking the Millionaire Code, The Millionaire Code, which have made their authors into millionaires.
Maybe I should be [...]

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I attended the David Bach seminar sponsored by Scotia Bank last night. At the outset, I should point out that I am not a big fan of David Bach. I am disciplined enough to spend less than I earn and I tend to save a significant chunk of my pay check, so pop financial experts [...]

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