Cutting Through the Noise
January 10, 2008
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published January 12, 2008 Note: this article is a revised version of a previous blog posting titled Fit to be Tyed that was picked up by the Globe and Mail. It was a ...
Read MoreJanuary 7, 2008
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published January 5, 2008 Over the holidays I had a chance to read Michael Mauboussin's More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places . From his perch as chief investment strategist ...
Read MoreDecember 20, 2007
Yesterday Morgan Stanley took a mortgage-related write-down of $9.4 billion, which led to a sizeable loss for the bank’s fourth quarter. This amount was an increase of $5.7 billion from an estimate it gave the street on November 8th. By ...
Read MoreDecember 4, 2007
Globe and Mail columnist Rob Carrick has recently been pounding the table on the poor investment merit of principal-protected notes (PPNs). In his column in last Saturday’s Report on Business ( A Do-it Yourself Principal Protection Plan ), Rob reiterates ...
Read MoreNovember 22, 2007
This was just too good to pass up... ...
Read MoreNovember 14, 2007
Some mutual fund executives must be getting pretty fed up with the academic world. First there was the study Mutual Fund Fees Around the World published last year by three professors from Harvard Business School, the London Business School and ...
Read MoreNovember 6, 2007
As I caught up on my reading this weekend, I was perusing an advertising feature that the Investment Fund Institute of Canada (IFIC) placed in the papers last week. The lead article was a review of a survey that IFIC ...
Read MoreNovember 5, 2007
Ever wonder why your broker or mutual fund company doesn’t show performance on your account statement? The reason is pretty simple – they don’t have to. There’s a group of financial advisors who are trying to change that. The Investor ...
Read MoreOctober 29, 2007
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published October 27, 2007 My partners and I were bouncing around ideas this week for an advertising program. We weren't coming up with anything too brilliant and even starting to get a little ...
Read MoreOctober 22, 2007
We have recently submitted a comment to the Joint Forum of Financial Regulators on their proposal (National Instrument 81-406) for a point-of-purchase document for mutual and segregated funds. If you have trouble sleeping, we have posted a copy of our ...
Read MoreOctober 17, 2007
On August 13th, we published a piece titled Proud to Shroud II – Claymore Balanced Funds , in which we discussed two new ETFs being offered by Claymore Investments. The new funds prompted us to make two comments. First, these ...
Read MoreOctober 15, 2007
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published October 13, 2007 The first column I wrote for The Globe and Mail was on hedge funds. As a guest columnist, I innocently poked my head up and declared that their fees ...
Read MoreSeptember 16, 2007
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published September 15, 2007 If you've been a regular reader of this column, you know that I sometimes write about things that are driving my wife crazy. When Lori gets on a rant ...
Read MoreAugust 13, 2007
I’m picking on Claymore Investments again. I don’t have a thing about them, but they’re hard to ignore because they advertise a lot and are releasing a steady stream of new products. They are also an interesting firm in that ...
Read MoreAugust 8, 2007
I wrote a piece in March about the TD Bank double ending an investment banking transaction ( TD Securities Does a Double Ender ). The theme of the posting was how free the investment banks are to operate with huge ...
Read MoreJuly 23, 2007
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published July 21, 2007 My first gig in the investment industry in the early eighties was as a conglomerate analyst at Richardson Greenshields. It was while doing that job I first became sensitive ...
Read MoreJune 28, 2007
We read in Larry MacDonald’s blog ( Avalanche of New Exchange Traded Funds ) on the Canadian Business site that there have been 18 new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) created this year in Canada. Horizons BetaPro has been the most active ...
Read MoreJune 27, 2007
We’ve written about fund manager changes a couple of times this year ( When a Manager Moves, Be Prepared and Knowing When to Sell is Key to Smart Investing ). Needless to say, we think that the person pulling the ...
Read MoreJune 25, 2007
There has been lots written about the impact that hedge funds and private equity firms are having on the stewardship of public companies. There is a concern, which I share, that with these deep-pocketed players hovering, it is more difficult ...
Read MoreJune 14, 2007
I came across an article on Yahoo! Finance last week that profiled the Fidelity Advisor Mid Cap Fund (the fund is only available in the U.S.). The author led off with a quote from the fund’s manager: “ The way ...
Read MoreJune 4, 2007
Hewlett Packard’s quarterly earnings came out recently and the firm continues to do well. Profits are rising based on cost reductions and modest revenue growth. Mark Hurd, the President and CEO, is receiving all the credit for HP’s turnaround and ...
Read MoreMay 22, 2007
At Steadyhand, we couldn’t be more delighted that Bill Holland is continuing to move CI Financial into the banking world. In the Financial Post last Friday, Bill reiterated that “we have to be in most of the business lines the ...
Read MoreMay 18, 2007
In his article in last Saturday’s Report on Business, Rob Carrick dredged up an idea he came up with in 1999 - the ‘Two-minute Portfolio’. It involves investing equal amounts in the two largest stocks in each of the S&P/TSX’s ...
Read MoreMay 3, 2007
This week Premier Ed Stelmach said that Alberta is not interested in moving towards a national securities regulator. His government supports the current regime and the improvements that are being made to coordinate efforts amongst Canada’s 13 regulators (Yes, 13). At ...
Read MoreApril 13, 2007
In our self-congratulatory posting about our official opening, we noted what a beautiful day it was in Vancouver on Tuesday. That nice spring weather is also symbolic of what is going on in the pension world these days. Thursday’s papers ...
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