How to get a fix on portfolio holdings before it’s too late! Do-it-yourself investors who have a number of different investment accounts could be courting financial trouble. Unless you have a complete picture of how all your assets are allocated, your investment...
10 first steps to investment planning Opening an investment account is relatively easy. What’s not so easy is how to proceed with investment planning, so you don’t immediately lose what’s in your account. So here’s my list of 10 basic investment and money management...
How can you tell when your portfolio is morphing into a different beast? What do you do about it? Read Robyn Thompson’s advice on how to check your portfolio for suspicious changes in The Globe and Mail’s “Financial Compass” series by Kira Vermond. © 2015 by Robyn K....
How to make sure your investments stay on track An annual investment review not only tells you how your portfolio has performed against your benchmark, but whether it’s time to make changes to your holdings. This could happen, for example, if some investments in your...
Should you switch to ETFs for their lower MERs? The lower management costs of exchange-traded funds compared with mutual funds seem almost too good to be true. Many do-it-yourself investors are wondering whether they should switch completely to a portfolio of ETFs....
How to keep your head when stock markets start gyrating If you got a bad case of market jitters over the latest stock market scare headlines, then the business media will have done their job – which is to get you to look at their websites, Twitter and other feeds,...
How to choose the right portfolio benchmark Does your portfolio consistently underperform the S&P/TSX Composite? If so, it might not be a reflection of your investment skills. You might just be using the wrong benchmark. A benchmark is an independent standard...
Robyn Thompson is regularly featured in The Toronto Star’s “Money Makeover” series by Deanne Gage. Money Makeover takes a look at Brian who is in his mid-50s and has lost his job. He has a lot of assets and wonders if he can retire.
Knowing which is which could affect your bottom line “Active” and “passive” portfolio management used to be fairly straightforward. Active managers traded frequently in an effort to beat the market, while passive managers relied on index-following strategies. But with...
If you manage a multi-billion-dollar portfolio, maybe The “smart money” seems to be sounding alarm bells about the equity markets. Big movers like Bill Gross of Janus Capital Group, Bruce Cooper, the CIO of TD Bank, and others, like the Institute for International...
What to do when ‘asset allocation,’ ‘diversification,’ and ‘correlation’ sound like nothing but gibberish Q - I’ve been told that in my portfolio, I should allocate my investment assets to meet my risk-tolerance level, but that I should also diversify my security...
But beware! Real estate comes with real risks With Canadian interest rates once again at rock bottom, income investors are hard-pressed to find any good income-producing assets without incurring a high degree of extra risk. Some advisors like to tout investment funds...