Posts Tagged ‘Investing’

Retirees and those nearing retirement are looking for ways to get income from their portfolios and today’s low interest rate environment doesn’t offer up many attractive options. Better yields can be found in the stock market, but that comes with some risk and many would rather play it safe. Can we find a happy medium…

My name is Brett Nelson and I’m a contributor and owner of Simplifying Finance. We’re a blog helping people get started understanding their personal finance and investing. Mainly, we focus on Ben Graham/Warren Buffett-style value investing. The good folks at Boomer and Echo here have allowed us to do a guest post, so we’re going…

In the world of DIY investing, many mutual fund investors bailed out in droves from their high-priced funds and have turned to lower cost ETFs. Basically, both mutual funds and ETFs are a diversified collection of stocks and bonds. ETFs have lower fees because they are “passively managed,” meaning their holdings closely match their specific…

Whether you’re a novice investor or experienced trader, most of us can stand to gain more knowledge about the stock market and different investing strategies. Investor education is exactly what Scotia iTRADE had in mind when it launched a series of free direct investing courses online. Through the Scotia iTRADE U education platform, investors can…

Mark Seed recently wrote in his blog, My Own Advisor, that his thoughts on his dividend investing style haven’t changed. This was actually a rebuttal of the post by our own Robb Engen, aka Echo, who described why he switched to an all ETF portfolio a short while ago. It’s apparent that readers of both…

I was born in 1979 – a year that places me at the tail-end of Generation X but still makes me cool enough to give advice to Millennials about investing. My mom worked in a bank and encouraged me at an early age to save and invest. I started investing in mutual funds at 18…

In 2008, then Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty introduced the Tax Free Savings Account. “We already have a retirement plan. This is a savings plan for everything else,” he explained. Perhaps that comment, as well as the name of the plan (not to mention the heavy advertising by banks), is the reason that most people…

It’s been almost two years since I made the switch from dividend investing to a passive, two-fund ETF solution. I sold a portfolio of 24 Canadian dividend-paying stocks and REITs and bought Vanguard ETFs VCN (Canadian stocks) and VXC (U.S. and International stocks). I started buying individual stocks in 2009, just after the stock market…

It isn’t what we say that makes a difference in the world. It’s what we do. There has been high interest and significant growth in socially responsible investing – also known as ethical investing – especially among younger investors and women. But, even though the trend is growing, it’s not new. Socially responsible investing has existed since…

The final stage of implementation for phase two of the client relationship model (CRM2) comes into effect today. What it means for Canadian investors is that they’ll begin to receive some much needed disclosure about investment fees and performance. Under the directive of the Canadian Securities Administrators, financial institutions are required to send two new mandatory…