Blog

Cutting Through the Noise


November 27, 2008

By Scott Ronalds

Is Your Fund Company Betraying Trust?

I recently finished reading Louis Lowenstein’s latest critique of the mutual fund industry, The Investor’s Dilemma: How Mutual Funds are Betraying your Trust and What to do About it .  The book is a great read for investors seeking an ...

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October 17, 2008

By Tom Bradley

Memory loss

I often reference Jeremy Grantham, the chairman of GMO in Boston, on the blog and in my columns.  The following clip is from his interview with Barron’s last week . Do you think we will learn anything from all of ...

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September 25, 2008

By Scott Ronalds

Dusting Off Unconventional Success

Canadian Capitalist, a prominent financial blogger, recently posted a glowing book review of David Swensen’s Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment .  CC followed up the review with another posting today ( How to Pick a Winning Mutual ...

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August 21, 2008

By Tom Bradley

Short Termism - Doesn't Make Sense

Dan Lewin, a friend and former colleague, sent me an interesting piece last week.  It is a letter to clients from Howard Marks, the Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a U.S. asset manager.  It is all good, but I particularly ...

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June 5, 2008

By Tom Bradley

It's Tough Beating the Index

Why do active managers find the S&P 500 so hard to beat? In his book More Than You Know – Finding Financial Wisdom In Unconventional Places , Michael Mauboussin takes a different approach to the question.  He starts by assessing ...

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May 8, 2008

By Scott Ronalds

Investment Blogs

The Globe and Mail published a report on investment blogs in Tuesday’s paper, where a number of their columnists identified some of their favorite blogs. If you’re a fan of our blog, you may want to check out a few ...

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April 25, 2008

By Scott Ronalds

An Intrinsically Attractive and Flexible Vehicle

Jonathan Chevreau’s article in Wednesday’s Financial Post highlights the latest book that bashes the mutual fund industry, The Investor’s Dilemma: How Mutual Funds are Betraying Your Trust and What to do About it , written by Louis Lowenstein. It’s books ...

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January 14, 2008

By Neil Jensen

Experimenting with Tom's ebook

I've been following the rise in self-publishing and book publishing on demand (POD). One of the leaders in the field is lulu.com , who allow you to publish hardcopy books in quantities as little as one. Just for fun, we selected ...

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December 28, 2007

By Neil Jensen

Book Review: The Four Pillars of Investing

I've finally gotten around to reading William Bernstein's popular 'The Four Pillars of Investing', first published in 2002 by McGraw-Hill. As the title suggests, Bernstein approaches understanding investing via four broad themes: Theory - emphasizes that investment returns are primarily a ...

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November 27, 2007

By Tom Bradley

Thumb Sucking = Better Long-term Returns

Research studies have consistently shown that investors do worse than the mutual funds they invest in. And depending on what study you read, the shortfall is sometimes quite substantial. David Sung, from Nicola Wealth Management in Vancouver, has written an ...

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November 25, 2007

By Neil Jensen

Book Review: Active Value Investing

Canadian Capitalist first brought Vitaliy Katsenelson's Active Value Investing to my attention in this posting . Katsenelson believes that we are in a range-bound market, defined as a market that goes up and down, but ultimately ends up back where ...

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October 10, 2007

By Scott Ronalds

ABCP - Another Made-in-Canada Defective Investment Product

There has been a lot written about Canada’s asset-backed commercial paper debacle. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to sort it all out, given that everyone has an axe to grind on the issue. Diane Urquhart is an independent analyst who I ...

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