In light of the market crash of Fall 2008, does diversification still make sense? In this video excerpt, Harry Markowitz explains the even in the market crash, different asset classes did behave as one would have expected them to:
- Citing a low interest-rate environment, Manulife Financial has announced that it will be hiking premiums on universal life policies. James Daw writes in The Star that consumers who foresee a need for permanent insurance may benefit from shopping sooner than later.
- Battered Investor Syndrome. That’s the colourful term value investor David Dremen employs to describe the mindset of investors who have experienced a couple of bruising bear markets in the past 10 years.
- Pay a salary or a dividend? It’s the eternal dilemma of a small business owner. Tax expert Jamie Golombek has a clear-cut answer: small business owners may actually be better off if they paid themselves enough dividends each year to fund current consumption and retained any surplus funds inside the corporation, where they would be invested in a diversified portfolio.
- Here’s a questionnaire from KPMG to help you decide if you need to update your estate plan.
- Million Dollar Journey has some wealth building tips for new graduates. The most important, in my opinion, is to simply learn to spend less than we earn.
- Money Smarts Blog did an exhaustive comparison of discount brokers. I like TD Waterhouse the most among the brokers I’ve used.
- Larry MacDonald says that there may not be much of a price difference between Canada and the US for cars like the Porsche Cayman due to currency rebates.
- Canadians investing in US-listed ETFs take a substantial initial hit on the currency exchange. Canadian Couch Potato offers some methods for reducing the cost of currency conversions.
- With investors suffering from the afore-mentioned Battered Investor Syndrome, you don’t hear much about the Smith Manoeuvre (SM) these days. In his Globe column Preet Banerjee says that leverage investing strategies such as the SM require a strong stomach for losses that a lot of investors lack.
- The Financial Blogger took a look at the pros and cons of using a credit card for all your payments.
- We hear a lot about modest returns from investments. Michael James points out that in a low inflation environment, these returns are not all that modest after all.
- For two long months, Canadian Financial Stuff had been running around trying to withdraw money from a RESP. He shares the lessons learned during the process here.
- Though he mostly invests for dividends, My Own Advisor says ETFs offer an effortless way to invest.
- Canadian Finance Blog shares some tips on how to watch cheap or free TV. These offerings are not strong enough to cut cable just yet (at least here in Ottawa).
- Young & Thrifty listed the pros and cons of growing up wealthy.
I’m unable to highlight all the articles worth checking out in my weekly round up but you can check them out through my Twitter feed. I try and keep my tweets to an average of not more than 5 per weekday.
Happy Halloween everyone! Have a great weekend!
