- According to the Conference Board of Canada, after-tax income adjusted for inflation will rise by 5.4% in 2006, due to the cut in income taxes, an expected cut in the GST and wage inflation. The bad news is that the Bank of Canada is likely to keep increasing interest rates and we will be paying more for variable-rate mortgages, lines of credit etc.
- I really enjoy reading Jonathan Chevreau’s Wealthy Boomer blog. Recent quotable quotes include: “Hedge funds are mutual funds for idiots” and “leaky bucket” to characterize the effect of taxes on non-registered investments.
- DIY investors can very easily construct a well-diversified portfolio using ETFs or index funds. For instance, it took me only a few hours (including coffee breaks) to construct the Sleepy Portfolio. Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist for The Globe and Mail, recently compared investing in mutual funds with passive investing including the cost of advice. He assumed that passive investors are paying 1.5% of assets in fees every year. In my opinion 1.5% is too steep for constructing and maintaining a passive portfolio.
- MoneySense, Canada’s best personal finance magazine has a new look. It is still a bit difficult to navigate the site. For example, I tried to find recent articles by Irwin Michael and had to give up after a few minutes.
Bookmark: del.icio.us Digg StumbleUpon
7 responses so far ↓
1 Investorial // Apr 11, 2006 at 8:41 pm
I blogged about Canadian Business Online’s website redesign last night, didn’t realize that MoneySense.ca now redirects to their domain, was there a merger/buyout?
Thanks for pointing out Jonaathan Chevreau’s articles. I used to read him. But it’s annoying that I cannot find an syndication feed to which I can subscribe.
2 Investorial // Apr 11, 2006 at 8:56 pm
For curiosities sake, the roster list of MoneySense’s (now My Money) columnists can be found here:
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/my_money/columnists/index.jsp
If you want to find it via navigation, follow the above link to get to the My Money homepage. There’s a big rectangle module titled “Topics”. The bottom right section are for columnists. It’s a shame that Irwin is not featured on the front. But you can click “more” to see them all.
3 Sean // Apr 12, 2006 at 6:16 am
The National Post held a contest between MBA groups from various universities across Canada, giving them $1M in play money and 6 months to play the markets. The group that won made heavy use of ETFs. The contest took into account volatility as well as return, so the ETFs helped volatility even though they didn’t have the highest return.
4 Canadian Capitalist // Apr 12, 2006 at 9:04 am
Vince: I tried the “Our Columnists” at the left panel and didn’t find Mr. Michael listed. They have so many useful articles that it is a shame that it is not indexed properly.
Sean: I read that story yesterday. Proves how difficult it is to beat passive investing (though the time frame was really short).
5 Investorial // Apr 12, 2006 at 8:37 pm
CC, I guess those are the problems they have to work out with the “merger”. Canadian Business have their own columnists that they feature on the navigational left panel while the old MoneySense crew are tucked away in hide-and-seek land. Hope you found Irwin Michael through my link in the comment.
6 Rich At Any Age - Your 20s ยป Investments + Editorials: Dissecting the good, the bad, and the ugly of investment / financial media! // Apr 30, 2006 at 7:57 pm
[...] I explained on Canadian Capitalist that MoneySense merged and reappeared as a sub-section of Canadian Business Online. As a result, that particular feature had links to articles that were no longer functional. I thought I might as well do a favour to MoneySense and direct readers to the stories that I found manually for each section. American readers may not understand the minor differences in the Canadian system but I’m sure you can follow along quite nicely! [...]
7 Brian // Jun 5, 2006 at 11:51 am
ETFs are the way to go. Mutual fund fees can kill your returns. For example, TD recently announced the closure of their TD/Fidelity International Portfolio Linked Notes (a fund purchased many years ago by an ex-broker of mine). I could either sell the fund or be put into a money market fund. Either way, I had to pay a 2.7 per cent fee to close out my position (and no it wasn’t a rear-load fee). It’s no wonder mutual funds has such as bad reputuation. And as for TD, I thinking of moving my account to a more fee-friendly institution.
Leave a Comment