Canadian Capitalist

It is very fortunate that we are having a milder-than-normal winter as the costs to heat our homes are soaring. The effective gas supply rate charged by Enbridge Gas (TSX: ENB) has risen to 41.19 ¢/M³ (effective Jan 1, 2006) from 29.47 ¢/M³, an increase of 40%. Enbridge advises that the increase would add $239 [...]

[Read more →]

I am adding A Frugal Focus to the Canadian Financial Blogs page. A relatively new blog, the Ontario-based author records his personal finance decisions, rants and occasional insights in achieving his financial goals. The author has very specific goals: accumulating a capital of $197,870.62 in his retirement accounts and $308,446.64 in a taxable account invested [...]

[Read more →]

Irrespective of which party wins the Federal election next week, Canadians are likely to get some tax cuts. All the main parties (including the NDP!) are promising to cut our onerous tax burden. KPMG Canada has a nice summary of the parties’ tax policies available here.
I am still surprised that the Liberals have a much [...]

[Read more →]

As a new father, I found The New York Times story on overbuying baby stuff of interest. Apart from some things (like a stroller) we received as baby shower gifts, we bought everything just when we needed it.
Here is a highly personal list of things we found useful (you will notice that I disagree [...]

[Read more →]

The Conservatives released their party platform today and unveiled a significant tax cut on capital gains:
[A Conservative government will] Eliminate the capital gains tax for individuals on the sale of assets when the proceeds are reinvested within six months. Canadians who invest, or inherit cottages or family heirlooms, should be able to sell those assets [...]

[Read more →]

The Ottawa Citizen reports today that shares of Zarlink Semiconductor (ZL, TSX: ZL), a local tech company, zoomed 22% shortly after opening on the NYSE amid heavy trading (44 times its volume on an average day). The reason for the frenzy wasn’t any fundamental development with the company, but a mention on Jim Cramer’s Mad [...]

[Read more →]

The Globe and Mail is reporting today that Wendy’s is planning to spin-off the rest of its stake in the Tim Hortons chain as a special dividend to its shareholders , as early as nine months after the IPO in March. Since the initial sale of Tims shares are going to be in great demand, [...]

[Read more →]

I am adding The Investor Class, a blog written by Jean-François Leclerc, an economics and finance student from Montreal, to the Canadian Financial Blogs page. Though the blog has been in existence for only two months, Jean-François writes detailed and insightful posts on investing and finance (for instance, check out his detailed analysis of the [...]

[Read more →]

TD Bank announced last month that it is getting out of the ETF business. TD currently has four Canadian equity index ETFs:

TTF, which tracks the TSX Composite Index.
TCF, which is the capped version of the TTF.
TAG and TAV, the growth and value versions of the Composite.

It is easy to see why: even TTF, the largest [...]

[Read more →]

Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist for The Globe and Mail, debates the pros and cons of hedging foreign currency exposure in a portfolio. I found several points that were very interesting and relevant to my portfolio:

The differences between the hedged and unhedged returns in the S&P 500 and MSCI EAFE indices over the past 15 [...]

[Read more →]