Posts Tagged ‘Investing’

The long term economic and cultural fallout over Brexit is still very much up in the air. What is crystal clear, however, is that investors, economists, and market pundits overreacted (again) to the news of Britain’s departure from the European Union. Stock markets took a sharp decline late last week and investors were treated to headlines such…

Using a robo-advisor can be a great way to lower your investment costs, diversify your portfolio, and reduce the time you spend worrying about investing. But if you’re a DIY investor like me then you can lower your costs even further by building a portfolio of index funds or ETFs on your own. Here are…

Canadian income trusts were a beneficial alternative corporate structure for companies due to their lower tax liabilities. They are known as “flow-through” vehicles because taxation was avoided by paying out all earnings, less expenses, as dividends directly to unitholders. Income trusts first became popular investments in the early 2000’s when interest rates declined. The main…

I’ve been using TD’s discount brokerage since 2009 when I made the switch from mutual funds to DIY investing. At that time, the TD Direct Investing WebBroker platform left much to be desired. The legacy web design of TD WebBroker was clunky and difficult to navigate (with 55 different navigational links!), trades cost $29 each way, and…

This is a guest post by Daniel who blogs at Urban Departures to help families set their personal finances on autopilot. His knack for saving fuels his love for travelling. He shares his secrets in Grow Them Savings, a one of a kind course designed to simplify investing for people with better things to do.…

Why are you settling for average returns? That’s one of the biggest criticisms I received after selling my portfolio of dividend stocks and switching to a two-ETF passive indexing approach last year. It’s true, I had thrown in the towel and given up on beating the market. But what many stock-pickers fail to understand is that index…

This post provides a detailed review of Nest Wealth and Wealthsimple, comparing two of Canada’s leading robo-advisors for your online investing needs. If we’ve learned anything over the past 10 years, thanks to the likes of Uber and Netflix, it’s that no industry is immune to the impact of disruptive technology. Now Canada’s big banks…

Many of our readers are DIY investors and, with the multitude of financial blogs and online information available, there is obviously a huge growing interest in managing your own investment portfolios. Investment do-it-yourselfers generally fall into two categories: Investors aiming to reduce fees. Over the last several years the media reports of high and hidden…

Every year I track my portfolio rate of return to see how my investments measure up to specific benchmarks. Prior to 2015 I invested primarily in Canadian dividend paying stocks and measured my stock-picking prowess against the iShares Canadian Dividend Aristocrats Index ETF (CDZ). Last year I sold all of my dividend stocks ($100,000 in…

Mutual funds have been a popular investment vehicle for a long time. There are currently over 5,000 mutual funds available in Canada and, according to the latest figures from The Investment Funds Institute of Canada, 33% of Canadian households are invested in them. Mutual funds are offered in different series or classes, which are identified by…