According to a 2014 Advocis sponsored PwC report there are approximately 100,000 financial advisors in Canada (yes, 1 for every 350 man, woman and child). Of those, 44% are insurance based, 33% non-bank dealer based, 13% bank based and 10% at full service brokers. (The report only lists 450 “fee-only financial planners”). Business models run the […]
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 […]
In the early 1980’s the prime lending rate peaked at over 20%. Since then the trend in the main benchmark rate in Canada and other developed economies has generally been down, leading to strong price returns in bonds over that period. With some fairly memorable bumps along the way stocks have also performed quite strongly […]
Investor sentiment surveys measure the percentage of investors that are positive about the future of stock market returns (bullish) versus those that are negative (bearish). The most commonly followed metric is the Yale investor sentiment survey which splits investors into two distinct groups: 1) institutional investors (pension funds, endowments, etc) and 2) individual investors. For […]
Wouldn’t it be just so easy if it were true? Well, if you believe the academic research, this odd anomaly does seem to hold up historically. There are a number of supposed stock market anomalies based on seasonality – The January Effect, the Monday effect, the Holiday Effect, the End of the Month Effect. These […]
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) can be a great tool for individual investors. Unfortunately we can’t say that they categorically are good for investors because ETFs now come is so many varieties, shapes and sizes. This is a minefield of risk for the do-it-yourself investor. ETFs can provide very low cost access to a broadly and […]
Believe it or not, financial forecasts from the analyst community and media are not designed to help you trade better or invest more wisely. They are designed to encourage you to trade more and invest more actively. Banks make more money when their clients trade more, not better. Financial media outlets make more money when […]
It seems these days that every time the Federal Market Open Committee (the branch of the Federal Reserve in the US the sets monetary policy) meets, the entire world sits waiting on the edge of their seat. It’s almost like we’ve come to believe that monetary policy is the only thing left driving stock returns […]
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 […]
There’s a lot of furor in the US right now over the Department of Labor’s proposed legislation to make all those providing retirement advice in the US actually act in the best interest of their clients (I know, a crazy concept). Regulators in Canada are also pondering the issue and no doubt we’ll eventually see […]