Investorial

Did you know that ETFs have been around since 1993? The Wall Street Journal had done a story last year on ETFs that caught my eye. I was looking to learn more about ETFs, and the WSJ article (where I got the chart in this article) gave a good historical summary of ETFs for the un-initiated. I’m not sure if the 13 years is supposed to be too long or too short. But the recent explosion of ETFs has prompted me to revisit the story again.

When it comes to watching over the financial industry, Canadian financial columnist Rob Carrick echos my sentiments exactly when he say “The cuter the investment industry gets in developing a product, the warier you should be about buying it.“. I’ve written before about ETFs becoming so “cute” that they’re barely recognizable! Are ETFs destined to suffer the same fate as did mutual funds? (more…)

GuruWatch, launched recently by Flexo (of Consumerism Commentary blog fame), intrigued me with his recent collection of book reviews about Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump’s new book - Why We Want You To Be Rich.

I guess these 2 “gurus” didn’t mind simply swapping advisors. The opportunity to work on a book together probably incubated from the time they met at those Learning Annex seminars. Are two “gurus” really better than one? Or are the sum of the parts less than the whole? Go ahead and read the reviews, but I believe the comments are more interesting! It’s wonderfully entertaining to analyze the polarizing effect that these gurus have on readers. (more…)