Investments

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Market Insights

Pitfalls of leveraging

The notion of borrowing money to invest likely isn’t first and foremost on most people’s minds in a down market. But I’ve come across yet another study touting the benefits of leveraging retirement savings. The release of the June 2008 working paper, Life-Cycle Investing and Leverage: Buying Stock on Margin Can Reduce Retirement Risk, written […]

By Jim Otar |February 1, 2009

6 min read

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Market Insights

Change is good

This global economic meltdown is beginning to expose great shortcomings in the fi nancial services industry. Maybe that’s a good thing, as it’ll shine the spotlight on areas that need real change. Let’s start with the regulators. Advisors across Canada are bombarded with paper shuffl ing and disclosure work, all in the guise of protecting […]

By Brian Hein |February 1, 2009

3 min read

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Market Insights

Common sense anyone?

There’s no way to describe the current financial crisis except as sharp, unpredictable, and enduring. Investors have witnessed a meltdown in assets that for most is uncharted. Few have been unscathed by this tidal wave of de-leveraging of assets caused by a freeze-up in credit markets. But despite the severity of this correction, the critical […]

By Jonathan R. Pinsler |February 1, 2009

6 min read

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Market Insights

The SWF world

In the 1966 Norman Jewison movie The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, Soviet submariners run unwittingly aground off New England and go ashore to find a towboat, triggering village rumours of an invasion. You may be excused for harbouring similar feelings toward sovereign wealth funds (affectionately known as SWFs), the new, massive investment […]

By Pierre Saint-Laurent |February 1, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

Hedge funds might shine in 09

Hedge fund managers, once the swashbuckling frontiersmen of international finance, have quickly gone from hero to goat. As the global credit bubble burst with a vengeance in 2008, so too did the oft-touted myth that these alternative strategies could deliver positive results in any market. But such sweeping claims paint the universe with too broad […]

By Al Kellett |February 1, 2009

5 min read

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Market Insights

Bountiful bonds

Corporate bonds might be suffering from their worst performance ever, but there’s a silver lining. Today’s investors are compensated with a significant risk premium for investing in shortand mid-term corporate bonds (corporates) over similar term Canadian government bonds (Canadas). Yield spreads for corporates in Canada have moved sharply higher due to a number of factors: […]

By Hanif Mamdani |February 1, 2009

6 min read

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Hedge funds: The next generation

Despite headline blowups and depressed returns, not all is bad in the hedge fund world. There’s still growth to be found in the future — by planting a seed. Now is an opportune time to snag prospective managers at preferred fees, thanks to the shakeout in the industry, suggest panellists at a Toronto discussion on […]

By Scot Blythe |January 30, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

Budget 2009 commentary: Perceptions count

The 2009 budget is a remarkable about-turn for a government that only two months ago was saying, in effect, the land is strong. But politics is as much about perception as it is about substance. So too is economics. The two are most saliently joined in a federal budget, whatever the power of politics over […]

By Scot Blythe |January 27, 2009

4 min read

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The end of fund of funds

The $50 billion fraud by Bernard Madoff probably spells the end of the fund-of-funds business. While Madoff wasn’t operating a hedge fund, he was using some techniques that hedge fund traders would apply — or at least he said he was. /images/other/h/hedgemaze08_feature.jpg Friends and acquaintances took him at his word. But so too did a […]

By Scot Blythe |January 23, 2009

4 min read

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Market Insights

ETFs dominate fund sales

Are you wondering where all those redemptions from long-term mutual funds have gone? It appears a large swath have ended up in ETFs, if sales figures reported by ETF providers are any indication. Barclays Global Investors Canada’s iShares, Canada’s largest ETF fund provider, had a sales year that was nothing short of phenomenal. The firm […]

By Mark Noble |January 19, 2009

4 min read

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