Investorial

One of the ways to monitor investment trends is to find out how they are marketed. Mutual fund names are often a good indication of how fund companies wish to reach their target investors. Remember those days when every mutual fund wanted to add the word “tech” into their name? For a while, everybody wanted to be involved in “nano-tech”, “real estate”. When dividend and value investing styles swung back into admiration, funds were tripping over themselves to make those two words show up.

It’s no surprise that “income trust” was also a hot naming convention for Canadian mutual funds, but the recent income trust melt-down due to new Canadian government tax law proposals have dampen those feelings. CIBC Asset Management has just renamed two of its income trust funds with a shady wolf-in-sheep’s clothing intent. (more…)

Big bubbles don’t always have to pop, big balloons don’t always have to burst. And as you watch one being blow up, there are always 2 camps of people eagerly awaiting the outcome. Is that next breath going to be “the one”, or will it keep going?

This past month, I have been eyeing various real estate headlines from a Canadian newspaper, The Globe & Mail. They hide their articles behind a wall of registration, so I won’t be able to link directly to the articles. But take a look at the headlines, what do you see?

• Bidding wars disappearing in Vancouver
• U.S. housing slump deepens, spreads
• Housing boom fizzles in Calgary
• White House lowers growth outlook amid housing slump

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google-finance-logo.jpg"/>Am I being too harsh on a beta product? I don’t think so. Especially if Google wants to slap its name on a financial quoting system, it had better be at least as accurate as many of the existing stock quoting systems out there. That’s the bare minimum expectations. Google even has the gulls to seek an SEC review of stock quote fees.

Google Finance has finally and quietly integrated pre-2001 data into their stock charts. However, as my screen shots show, Google is still suffering from data inaccuracies. I revisited my previous example of a data inaccuracy, and was not surprised to find that it is still not resolved. As of this writing, Yahoo Finance correctly identifies the 52-week high of Tim Hortons (NYSE: TSX) to be $30.35, occurring on Nov. 22, 2006. Google Finance still stubbornly shows $33 as the 52-week high instead. More screenshots after the jump! (more…)

This article was original published at GuruWatch.org where I’m helping to contribute. Check it out!

Remember that comedy routine from Jeff Foxworthy? The one that starts with “you know you’re a redneck if ….”? I’m not that creative to create an entire list, but we can certainly start one about so-called financial gurus and keep adding to it, right? Let’s jump right into it!

You know you’re a guru if … you have your own learning annex seminar. The learning annex boasts speaker line-ups such as Donald Trump, Rich Dad Robert Kiyosaki, Suze Orman, and yes Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money fame. In this video from this past weekend’s seminar, you’ll see Jim recommend 5 stocks. In classic guru fashion, this is how he announced his recommendations:

“We want to win and there are winnings to be had [...] I need everyone in this audience to buy one share of these 5 stocks I’m about to mention. 1 share! 1 share will do it!”

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Let’s face it, most investing decisions are made as easily as throwing a dice. I have a pretty hot temper, so I make it a point not to jump into things when it comes to investment decisions. This explains why I haven’t covered the recent Canadian Income Trusts melt-down like some of my peers have. There’s been some excellent discussions brewing. Almost a week has past, so here’s my perspective.

I’ve been a very disloyal Canadian investor. For the last 2 years, I’ve only batted eyes at U.S. companies while the Canadian indexes kept creeping higher. However, I’ve recently taken interest in beaten-up Canadian companies such as Loblaw, and Canadian oil and natural gas income trusts. My interest started with these income trusts due to their pricing issues in July and August, as well as the Amanranth hedge fund debacle. Such negative news always help to peak the interest for the contrarian in me. I can’t believe my knowledge ramp-up of income trusts have come at such a time of opportunity! (more…)

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…)