In the age of modern volatility, you need yield. Be it dividends, coupon payments, or GIC returns, it is extremely difficult for a small-time investor to build a personal portfolio centering on capital gains. However, unless you’ve stocked up on a year’s worth of anti-acids and nausea … [Read more...]
Vanguard World Funds & Consumer Staples Index Fund
Filed Under: Fund Analysis by
Last series of posts, I summarized and compared a set of somewhat aggressive utilities funds. Since then, the markets have become even more volatile, and the market is predicted to continue regressing into instability. In honour of these predictions, I’d like to spend this week … [Read more...]
Maintaining Market Exposure through Traditionally Ultra Safe Asset Classes
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
I find I can’t bring myself to watch the business news anymore in the mornings. Everywhere I look, panelists and pundits alike seem to be lamenting over the increasing complexity required to maintain a portfolio in the modern market. Whereas statistical and technical alchemy used … [Read more...]
Why Pipeline Infrastructure Matters More for Monster Caps
Filed Under: Investing Trends by
Over the year, we’ve seen a great deal of debate occurring over the environmental feasibility of the Keystone pipeline project. This project proposes to build a massive new pipeline from Canada, which will transport petroleum products all the way throughout the USA. While … [Read more...]
The Basics of Dynamic Hedging
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Over the course of the week I’ve been describing all the nuance of a specific options strategy known as a strangle position. While the position is extremely cash intensive, it does provide an interesting thought experiment that might provide some additional insights into how it is we … [Read more...]
Keeping Track of Selling Structured Settlement Payments
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
"I have no idea what structured settlement payments I have left." "There’s no way I have already sold those payments." Those of us that have been in the cash flow business for any length of time have heard these comments all too many times. A potential client will call … [Read more...]
Investment Risk and Understanding When to Sell or Hold
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
When we sell a security, we are doing so with the understanding that we can re-invest the proceeds in a way that will maintain our nominal returns. The logic behind this is fairly simple, in that we wouldn’t sell the security if we didn’t feel as though there was a long-term benefit … [Read more...]
Understanding Value Investing
Filed Under: Value Investing by
In the interest of continuing the ongoing trend of examining accessible investing strategies for running personal portfolios, I’m going to dedicate the next few posts to examining how it is that the pursuit of value can fortify a portfolio’s returns. Specifically, I’m going to break … [Read more...]
Doomsday Scenarios Systemic Risk of Investing
Filed Under: Doomsday Scenarios by
Systemic risk has a bad reputation in the marketplace. As an investor, it represents all of the aspects of your portfolio that are beyond your control (ie. Cannot be hedged or diversified out of existence), and therefore represents the risk of your portfolio. However, I find that … [Read more...]
32 Holdings Equals a Diversified Investment Portfolio
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Diversification is a confusing topic for some investors. More often than not, it simply acts as a media buzz word to sell investors more securities into their portfolio than they need. However, there can be no argument against the effectiveness of diversification as a means of … [Read more...]
Factors that Could Make the Euro Crash an Aberration in 2012
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
In the last article I discussed how it is that relativity comes into place when looking at a currency decline. In the case of the Euro, an investor needs to understand that both the USD and the Euro were decreasing in that time period, meaning that the decline in the value of the Euro … [Read more...]
Building Good Credit History
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
While building up credit lines to demonstrate an ability to access credit for additional loans acts as a fantastic strategy for building up long-term credit from a respectable starting point, it can sometimes seem particularly difficult to build up credit from a negative position. If … [Read more...]
Investing in Real Estate Income Trusts: Apartments
Filed Under: Investing Trends by
If you look back as far as immediately after the crash of 2009, one of the best investments you could have possibly made would have been into undervalued hard-assets. Between foreclosed homes being bought, renovated, and flipped for 360% returns over a year, and gold sky-rocketing by … [Read more...]
FBR & Vanguard Utilities Index Funds
Filed Under: Fund Analysis by
In this week’s fund analysis I’m going to dive into a pair of high quality Utilities funds. Known for their ability to produce consistent incomes from distributions, while holding consistent prices, Utilities are a must-have for any income-focused portfolio. However, since all of … [Read more...]
How DRIP Dilution Can Hurt Your Investment Portfolio
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Dividend Re-Investment Plans are an excellent program for an investor to build up a nominal position in a company over time. They allow an investor to opt out of cash dividends in favour of distributions that are composed of more stock. If the stock is expected to rise more over the … [Read more...]
David Harvey Gives His Marxist View on the Financial Crisis
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
This is something I went back and forth on posting for a while now. A video by David Harvey who is a self proclaimed Marxist. While many of you may not agree with his point of view it is a and interesting video. So the video was created by the Royal Society which is a British … [Read more...]
Switching Equity Yields for Corporate Bond Yields
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
In the last post, I showed you how a simple bank transaction (a currency swap) can unlock some extremely attractive foreign bond yields, while maintaining a risk level that is remarkably similar to their domestic equivalents. Today, I’m going to take the same train of thought one … [Read more...]
Credit Score Factors: Account Diversity
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
Upon having established a firm payment history, a borrower is able to begin making strategic choices about how it is that they’re going to pursue bringing their rating up from a mediocre grade to a good one. Because of the way in which the incremental savings that a 1% decrease in a … [Read more...]
Stabilizing ETF Yields
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
As discussed in the last article, ETFs inherit many of the pricing attributes of a derivative, on top of their value as mutual funds. This means that the value of these assets comes indirectly from the underlying assets of the security itself, as well as the market’s perception of how … [Read more...]
Research in Motion Value Play
Filed Under: Business Value by
In the past, we’ve discussed how it is that value investments are those opportunities that allow us to invest in assets that are trading below their true worth. In the interest of trading dimes for dollars, a value investor is often considered to be a contrarian, because a security … [Read more...]
