Canadian Capitalist

Unconventional Success is a brilliant book by David Swensen, a legend among institutional investors — the Yale Endowment Fund (the fund report is worth checking out) that he manages has consistently outperformed rivals at other Universities and comparable benchmarks by wide margins. The fund achieved these returns by diversifying into real estate, oil and gas, [...]

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The Intelligent Portfolio does an excellent job of explaining ten basic concepts needed to make good investment decisions in a simple and straightforward manner. The book will be invaluable for a beginning investor and there is plenty to keep sophisticated investors interested as well. I found the discussion of market portfolio, which is composed [...]

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Everyone loves lists - there’s the list of 100 greatest movies, 100 best novels, 1000 places to see and even a website devoted to the lists of bests. Lists are very subjective which is why they are endlessly created and debated. I’ve probably read hundreds of money books over the years and here are my [...]

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House Lust by Newsweek reporter Daniel McGinn is an eye-opening account of the obsession that many Americans have for their homes, which first led to one of the biggest boom in housing prices and later turned into a bust with far-reaching consequences. A Washington Post columnist quoted in the book probably defined the term best [...]

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The Romans said nosce te ipsum - “know thyself” and in this excellent new book, Dan Ariely, describes experiments that illuminate aspects of human behaviour that are, in turns, surprising, delightful, amusing and yes, even disturbing. Subtitled “The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”, the author who is a professor at MIT says that we [...]

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Sometimes authors or publishers offer to send me a book for a possible review. I usually accept with every intention of reading the book and writing a review. Unfortunately, as I didn’t have the time to read the following books - I didn’t get past the first chapter on two of the books and skimmed [...]

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After reading a note on Jon Chevreau’s blog, I asked the author Francis D’Andrade for a review copy of the book, which is titled after the question most frequently asked of the author. Mr. D’Andrade has written an unusual personal finance book that talks a lot about the emotional aspects of money in a humorous, [...]

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I borrowed this book (affiliate link) from the local library after reading Jon Chevreau’s interview with one of the authors - Ziv Bodie. Prof. Bodie and co-author Michael Clowes suggest that investors would be better off eschewing equity risk and investing their savings in inflation-protected instruments such as real-return bonds.
There is a lot to [...]

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With traditional pension plans covering less and less numbers of Canadians, RRSPs are supposed to take their place. But, a significant number of Canadians don’t even have a RRSP and only a tiny fraction contribute the maximum every year. One of the reasons for this sad state of affairs is a lack of awareness - [...]

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Though I don’t necessarily agree that her approach to picking individual stocks is suitable for a beginning investor, it is easy to see why author Gail Bebee has earned plaudits from Ellen Roseman, Larry MacDonald, Jon Chevreau and others. This self-published, slim book running a mere 194 pages largely delivers on the promise to provide [...]

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