In this edition of Planning Matters, we are delighted to have guest contributors Debbie Amaral and Jackie Cope discuss two ways to help build your long-term wealth – by harnessing insurance to protect against asset losses along the way. Cyber Insurance Picture this: you pull into your driveway, disconnect your phone from ApplePlay...

In today’s volatile markets, it is more important than ever to do your homework and stick to your investment discipline to improve the odds the companies you own are not only able to survive, but also prosper through a variety of economic conditions.Before investing in a stock, our analysts conduct comprehensive independent research...

Inflation has been everywhere in the headlines lately, prompting many conversations with clients about the causes of these cost-of-living increases, how permanent they might be, and what impact they might have on investment portfolios. We’ll take each of these questions in turn, but start with a look under the hood. What’s Causing the...

You’ve worked long and hard in Canada for years, quite possibly several decades, and now the finish line is in sight. Retirement. That Holy Grail.Just one minor thing: How are you going to pay for it? You may have a company-sponsored pension to support your income needs during retirement, or you may have...

In Part I of this series, we reviewed the rise of passive investing and flagged some unintended consequences that have resulted. In Part II, we review recent financial literature which queries the robustness of the 20th century research which became ‘conventional wisdom’ about active vs passive management and importantly, to what extent it...

The story of passive investing is one of consequences, both intended and unintended. This two-part series aims to shed light on both, and to highlight the benefits and costs that these instruments carry. We’ll start in British-ruled India in a city overrun with snakes.Cobras, cobras, everywhere… As the story goes, for reasons unknown...

I have a confession to make: in 2014, after holding on for five years, I sold my remaining Blackberry shares for C$10.32 per share, for a loss of almost 90%. This incident was thankfully) relatively isolated and involved a small amount of money I could afford to lose but it was also a...

In the words of steel baron and progressive philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, “it is more difficult to give money away intelligently than to earn it in the first place”.People support charities for a variety of reasons, with the types of charities and the amount and frequency of gifts dependent on each person’s financial and...

When I was first learning to be a stock analyst, one of the key pieces of advice I receivedwas to read several papers, cover to cover, every day. While this may seem like a lot,there was wisdom buried (quite literally) in this advice. The general benefit is knowledge of themes and trends occurring...

In the eye of the storm in June 2020, we published a piece on value investing. Titled “Has Value Had Its Last Dance?”, the article asked if value’s best days were behind it. Like the storied Chicago Bulls in Michael Jordan’s final year, were the good times gone? Was value dead?It’s pretty typical...

A common tactic of the hacker is to create a sense of urgency, to get people to react to their message without pausing to question what’s being asked of them. A pandemic provides a built-in sense of that urgency, so the past year has unfortunately created many new opportunities for those seeking malicious...

“It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Never in our lifetimes has Yogi Berra’s proverb seemed more appropriate than in the current environment of uncertainty. While we don’t try to predict the future, given recent market strength, it’s worth doing a sanity check. Investors selling their stock in the March 202...