Before we dive into today’s round-up, an update on the Bloggers for Charity initiative. The top bid is currently $400 by Straight Talk Investing’s Dr. Dale Rathgeber. Thank you Dr. Dale! If you’d like to outbid Dr. Dale, please contact me directly.
Keeping Steady: The Bank of Canada decided to keep interest rates level this week. The Bank’s statement seems to suggest that interest rates are stuck at neutral but did note that it is monitoring economic developments carefully. The Prime Rate to which variable-rate mortgages and lines of credit are tied stays at 3.0 percent.
The Mystery of MF Global’s Missing Millions: MF Global was a large brokerage firm that recently filed for bankruptcy. Clients of the brokerage whose money was supposed to have been segreagated were stunned to discover that $1.2 billion of their funds was “missing”. A recent column in Thomson Reuters explained that the shortfall can likely be attributed to an aggressive circumvention of securities regulations.
Shootout over MERs: The National Post’s Jonathan Chevreau singles out Investors Group for it’s fee-laden mutual funds. Personally, I just wish that Canadians vote with their wallet for low(er) fees and mutual fund companies will quickly get the message.
How to lower your MERs?: If you are wondering how you can stop hating Investors Group and start loving lower MERs, you’ll find Rob Carrick’s recent column useful. In it, he highlights the mutual fund companies that offer low fee products.
Around the blogs
Preet Banerjee points out that Management Expense Ratios are *not* tax deductible but advisory fees charged directly *maybe*.
Canadian Financial Stuff featured a very funny post on financial bloggers. As someone who orders food at every meeting now, I take strong exception to his depiction of bloggers as tea drinkers!
Million Dollar Journey is celebrating the five year anniversary of his blog by giving away $1,000 worth of prizes. Congratulations!
My Own Advisor offered a review and three-part series of posts of favourite takeaways from the Millionaire Teacher.
Money Smarts Blog wonders if it is worth keeping a PC Financial accounts for the points alone?
If you have a contrarian bent and want to take advantage of the turmoil in Europe, Larry MacDonald has some ETF suggestions.
Michael James on Money says that dividend portfolios that contain 20 stocks, on average, do not incur much of a penalty in terms of returns.
Boomer and Echo offers some tips on protecting yourself from identity theft.
