Managing retirement income with a fixed income wedge

Just as dollar cost averaging can work to help you build assets for retirement, it can also work against you when you need to be spending your assets during retirement.  In retirement your goal is no longer purely long-term, but also includes an element of short-term spending.  Just as your time horizon is the most important […]

Mutual Funds 101 Booklet

Dynamic Funds has created an easy to read booklet explaining many of the basics of mutual funds.  To give you an idea of what is in the booklet, I have copied its table of contents below. Mutual funds: What they are and how they work 1. History of Dynamic Funds 2. Why invest in a […]

Registered Disability Savings Plans (RDSPs)

Mackenzie Financial is part of one of Canada’s largest companies and is one of the few institutions that has launched a RDSP.  Administering this type of plan is relatively expensive, requires significant systems programming and since these plans are only a few years old, they are almost all small accounts. They have produced a helpful RDSP […]

How to improve your returns

If you think most people are rational investors, think again. Financial services market research firm DALBAR has surveyed individual households for more than 20 years and created their Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB). This measures the returns of the S&P 500 Index against the returns of the individual investor. Here are two surprising facts: The […]

The only four equity portfolios

Once you have dealt with the basics of identifying that a) equity investments are necessary to protect retirement income from the ever-rising cost of living; and b) diversification is essential to avoid permanent losses you can see that there are really only four ways to manage that equity portfolio, as shown in the diagram below. […]

Wherefore art thou Dividends?

The question of dividends when it comes to mutual funds is a tricky one, so let me try and share some perspective that I have gained over the last 18 years in the financial business.  I will try to explain the role and importance of dividends paid by individual companies and why this is a different […]

Vengrowth/Covington annual 15% redemption

As a Covington Fund II shareholder, when can I take my first annual 15% fee-free redemption? At the time of the merger, investors could pay a fee to redeem matured shares and those transactions have been completed.  Covington will communicate with financial advisors when the back office conversion has been completed and the first redemption […]

Mackenzie Ivy Foreign Equity Fund money manager report

On December 7th I participated in a conference call with the team that manages the Mackenzie Ivy Foreign Equity Fund.  The fund has been among the best global equity funds over a long period and has done so with much lower than average price volatility.  Since the beginning of the tech decline in 2000, the […]