The Long-Term Case for Stocks: Optimism about the stock market is in short supply these days. The Wall Street Journal ran a story on a long-range market forecast that expects US stocks to return an annualized 6.5% to 2020. The forecast sounds about right since dividend yields are just above 2 percent and economic growth is expected to be muted. (Correction: The original post incorrectly said the returns expectation was inflation-adjusted. Thanks to reader Viscount for catching the error).
Commission Free ETFs: Canadian Couch Potato broke the story that Scotia iTrade became the first discount broker to offer commission-free trading on ETFs, primarily those offered by Claymore. Jon Chevreau of the National Post and Rob Carrick of The Globe and Mail offered their take on the development here and here.
The limitations of behavioural research: Behavioural economics offers all kinds of insights into how our emotions affect our financial decision making. In this interview, an expert explains why understanding the impact of emotions doesn’t necessarily lead to better decision making.
Get a Variable-Rate Mortgage If you are planning on a new variable-rate mortgage or your variable-rate mortgage is coming up for renewal, you might want to lock in the current rate ASAP. Canadian Mortgage Trends reported the discounts from Prime on variable-rate mortgages offered by the banks are shrinking fast.
Around the blogs:
Have you wondered what the heck the talking heads mean by quantitative easing? Preet wrote up a very good explanation.
Michael James finds the numerous solitications for newsletter subscriptions by the Motley Fool to be tremendously off-putting. Out of curiosity, I checked out the Fool website. The top story is headlined “Why market timing is a joke”. Scroll down the page and you find an ad titled “The 2011 Market Crash is Coming… Click here to watch this stunning video”. You can’t make this stuff up.
Canadian Financial Stuff reminds readers to add a bit of money to the RESP. He also has some useful insights on withdrawing from a RESP.
If you are making a voluntary disclosure to the CRA, should you hire a lawyer or an accountant? The Blunt Bean Counter weighs in with his opinions.
Mike Holman wrote a detailed post on how to estimate and budget for home maintenance costs. Me? I just wing it.
Jim Yih explains why dollar cost averaging is a very good investment strategy.
Kevin Press of Today’s Economy Blog has things the Senate Finance Committe can investigate after it finishes looking into why products sold in Canada are more expensive than south of the border.
That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend everyone!
