Canadian Capitalist

While it is painful to experience sharp losses, market downturns are typically a very good time to shop for stocks. In the market lows of 2002 or 2003, you could have blindly picked up a group of stocks and still made a decent profit. I have no idea if the sharp sell-off last week is [...]

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A few years back, ING Direct was pretty much the only game in town, offering online savings accounts with much higher interest rates than anyone else. Today, Canadians have such an array of choices available that ING Direct is not the de facto or the best option anymore. Here are some of the recent (and [...]

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If you dabble in individual stocks (specifically small-cap stocks), eventually one of your holdings will offer you a warrant. A warrant allows you to buy a set amount of shares at a set price within a certain time period. Warrants are issued to entice investors to buy into an equity or debt offering by the [...]

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The biggest news this week is of course the plunge in stock markets. There was no place to hide - Canadian, US and international stocks all fell sharply. I don’t know if this is a short sharp correction or the beginnings of a bear market but it is important to remember that stocks move both [...]

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In response to an earlier post on iShares CDN REIT Sector Index Fund (XRE), some readers were interested in the historical risk and return characteristics of REITs. David Swensen writes in Unconventional Success that real estate is riskier and more rewarding than bonds and has less risk and lower returns than equities:
Shorter-term data on market [...]

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We recently received a call from our credit card provider asking to confirm some recent transactions. This has happened a few times already and the only reason I can think of is that we used the credit card once at Winners last Fall (As you may recall, credit and debit card information was stolen from [...]

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Reader LA sent the following comment about a major weakness of online brokers - the absence of portfolio performance analysis tools.
It seems to me it would be a simple matter for a brokerage firm to include analysis tools on their websites since all the data is already in their computers.
In order to get this portfolio [...]

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Last week, I reviewed RBC Direct Investing to complement Million Dollar Journey’s series of posts covering discount brokers and in this post, I’ll offer my thoughts on TD Waterhouse. We got our first account with TD Waterhouse when the broker purchased the Canadian arm of Ameritrade, which used to offer $10.99 trades for US equities, [...]

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If you order a cold drink at Second Cup, you might as well order a small instead of a medium. Ellen Roseman found that the quantity is the same but the medium costs 40 cents more.
Melanie of Canadian Mortgage Trends estimates how the recent rate hike by our central bank will affect you if you [...]

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Rita Trichur, a journalist with The Toronto Star, is looking to interview people living in the GTA who are enticed by a spate of new promotions offered by the big banks (like the offer of an iPod from TD Bank) and are looking to switch. Interested readers can contact her at rtrichur-at-thestar-dot-ca.
Thanks to Jon for [...]

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