How do you like them Apples?

“In short, these ETFs live by the big stock sword but they also die by the big stock sword.” This quote from a Bloomberg article this morning “Apple Takes a $4 Billion Bite Out of ETFs as Smart-Beta Shines”, captures one of the obvious shortcomings of investing in simple exchange traded funds (ETFs) that weight their holdings […]

Canada comeback?

“Not to fear, we have found a manager based in our very own Canada that is able to consistently beat the pack” S&P has done a brilliant job over the last few years of shining the light on the fund management industry by publishing it’s SPIVA Scorecards which report on the performance of actively managed mutual funds […]

Are value stocks finally poised to outperform?

Index investing means taking an automated or rules-based approach to constructing and managing a portfolio compared to active investing which relies on a portfolio manager’s judgement to manage the portfolio.  There are many ways to implement an index approach.  Most index funds follow a commercially published index like the S&P/TSX 60 in Canada or the S&P500 in the US.  The […]

Only the winners get to tell their story

In Friday’s Morningstar article “Sequoia Fund Symbolizes What Was, But No Longer Is”, John Rekenthaler chronicles the recent woes of the legendary Sequoia Fund and suggests it may symbolize the end of an investing era – things have changed since the time Sequoia launched forty years ago: Index funds are more prevalent and fewer managers can demonstrate exception […]