Beware the man bearing low risk stable returns

An “article” in a leading Canadian financial daily last week urged investors to consider alternative investments such as hedge funds, private debt funds, factoring funds, etc in order to achieve solid investment returns without taking on high risk.  Once the privilege of the ultra-rich, such investment opportunities are now becoming increasingly available to a larger swath of the […]

Dimensional founder and co-CEO David Booth wins Lifetime Achievement Award

Most sensible surveys of peer-reviewed academic evidence will conclude that investors are best served with low cost, well-diversified investment strategies.  Practically what that means for most investors is investing in passive low-cost market access products like index mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) based on simple commercial indices like the S&P500 for US stocks, the S&P/TSX […]

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 […]

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 […]