Blog: Cutting Through the Noise

Personal Investing

This Isn't the RRSP Season to Miss

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on January 13, 2009

As regular readers will know, I follow Jeremy Grantham and his colleagues at GMO with great interest.  Jeremy’s quarterly missives are always enlightening and the firm, which is based in Boston, has a great long-term track record.  One of the ...

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Road of Least Recovery

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on December 18, 2008

I am on a list to receive a daily email advertisement from Advisor.ca.  I see a different product from a different company every day.  For me, it’s a great way to keep in touch with what products are being pushed ...

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Corporate Bonds Assuming Worse than the Worst

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on December 12, 2008

This posting is for the bond geeks in the crowd. The manager of our Income Fund, Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management, recently did the following analysis on corporate bonds.  If you passively buy a portfolio of 5-yr U.S. investment ...

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China Inc. - Buy, Hold or Sell

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on December 9, 2008

I think it’s a fascinating time for China watchers.  What am I saying?  It’s always an interesting time to be a China watcher. There has been an underlying assumption in the market that China will grow rapidly forever.  Government resources ...

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Weak Markets Needn't be all That Taxing

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on December 4, 2008

We all love to hate taxes.  Especially when it comes to our investments.  This explains why some investors are now busy harvesting losses to offset any prior capital gains.  It also explains the growing number of investment products on the ...

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Lower Returns Going Forward...NOT!

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on October 29, 2008

CAC 40 (France) - down 50.5%. FTSE 100 (UK) - down 51.9%. S&P 500 (U.S.) - down 40.3%. Hang Seng (HK) - down 54.0%. MSCI Emerging Markets - down 62.0%. S&P/TSX Composite Index - down 32.8%. These are year-to-date market returns up ...

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More of the Same... But Better

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on October 24, 2008

There has been a constant theme in this space over the last month or so – hang in there, long-term assets are cheap now, start thinking about the other side of the valley.  A friend and fellow entrepreneur, Thane Stenner, ...

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Two Decisions to Make

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on October 9, 2008

A friend and client called me yesterday and floated the idea of selling everything and waiting out the storm. Like everyone, his portfolio is down, although he has been relatively well positioned with a large cash/GIC/money market position. Previously in ...

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Six Questions to Help You Navigate These Choppy Markets

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on October 6, 2008

The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published October 4, 2008 “Finding the right answers is easy; it's asking the right questions that's difficult.” Tim Price, the director of investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, started a recent blog ...

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A Week of Buying, Hand-holding, Grumpiness, Fear - and Then Some Hope

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on September 21, 2008

The Globe and Mail, Report on Business Published September 20, 2008 I love writing this column, except on weeks like this. I don't generally do time-sensitive stuff (this isn't my day job), but when the markets are melting down, writing ...

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Weathering the Storm

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on September 15, 2008

In markets like this, almost everyone is unhappy.  Some conservative investors might have done OK if they owned lots of government bonds, but most are down more than they expected and they didn’t expect to be down at all.  No ...

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The Active Versus Passive Debate

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on September 11, 2008

I recently received some thoughtful comments and questions from a client who is weighing the benefits of both the active and passive (indexing) investment approaches.  I felt my responses may be helpful to others with the same thoughts/questions. Investor:   ...

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