Weekend Reading – Absolute performance, best dividend stocks, Bitcoin lost and more!
Hey Readers,
Thanks again for making time to check out the site. I’m just a few readers away from going past 5,000 subscribers!
Very much appreciated!
This is my latest Weekend Reading edition, highlighting some of my favourite articles from the week that was across the personal finance and investing blogosphere.
Just in case you missed last week’s edition you can find it below!
Weekend Reading – RRSP tips, why bonds, 4% rules, best decisions, looking to buy stocks and more!
This week, I posted this new TurboTax Canada giveaway:
You can win 1 of 3 online versions to use this tax season by entering my giveaway.
Even if you don’t win, my partnership gets you $15% off TurboTax products.
Read the post, enter the giveaway for free and start enjoying TurboTax for free as well – use my link to ensure you get 15% off at the checkout.
Enjoy these articles and see you here next week. I’ll share my latest dividend income update (like this one) then!
Mark
Weekend Reading
A refreshing take from Nick Maggiulli (COO for Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC in the U.S.) about being honest when it comes to his own investment performance. From Nick:
“My portfolio allocation has varied over time. I’ve traded in and out of gold more than once, I’ve altered the size of my bond allocation, and, in recent years, I’ve purchased art and Bitcoin as well. While investing is clean in theory, it can be messy in practice.”
In his post, as a respected wealth manager, Nick confessed he has underperformed the S&P 500 in his own portfolio. But that’s not the point.
The point is: you don’t need to beat the market to realize your financial goals.
You need a good plan that includes one you can stick with over time. That’s because our behaviour will undoubtedly get in the way. Yet a good savings rate, a disciplined approach to investing, will help you realize your goals over time – even if you don’t clobber the market.
I’ve been saying something like this for years on my site:
The only thing that really matters is your plan. That plan should deliver the requisite income (and growth) you need and desire.
Keep that in mind the next time you hear anyone discuss “beating the market” or index invest at all costs.
Going further, Nick’s post pushed me to reflect upon my own portfolio performance over the last 10 years.
Our returns have been about 8% inside the taxable account, 7.5% inside the TFSAs, and closer to 9% in our RRSPs (mostly U.S. assets in the latter). If we are to earn the same thing over the next decade (7.5%-9%) I will be thrilled to be honest. I will be able to retire from full-time work easily.
Great questions to reflect on, when it comes to money management, from Melissa at Our Life Financial.
I think my favourite from her list is the one that reflects on risk – what might happen if we lost one (or more) jobs. We’ve had an emergency fund for years and that provides some comfort. Thankfully, we also have disability coverage via work benefits.
In terms life insurance, we just went through our own term life vs. whole life insurance decision-making process. Check that out here, what we bought, why and how much. Yes, you can be over-insured but not having enough can be financially devastating.
A newer blogger, Jeff from Financial Pupil wrote an extremely comprehensive guide for students striving to navigate their personal finances in 2021. In his bio, Jeff mentioned he is a competitive golfer – once ranked 10th best junior in Canada. I would have to play my very best to match his scores I bet!
BTW – I’ve been working on this pump drill with a glove at home over the winter. You? 🙂
Some epic and lengthy content this week from Tawcan when he shared a long list of Best Canadian Dividend Stocks from the dividend investor community.
Not surprisingly maybe, some popular names also in the low-vol space floated to the top of his list:
“Alimentation Couche-Tard, TD, Fortis, Canadian National Railway are the favourites due to their strong revenues, wide moat, and solid dividend increase history.”
I did like Bob’s closing thesis as well – investors who may not be comfortable with owning any individual stocks might be very well served owning an all-in-one ETF for instant diversification and the potential for long-term appreciation.
On that note, on Cashflows & Portfolios you can find some of those great all-in-one ETFs including any foreign withholding taxes that might apply.
A fine roundup of women in the personal finance community courtesy of Kari from Money In Your Tea. These women certainly make the personal finance blogosphere a far better place with these great business owners, leaders and content creators.
Discover the Amazing Ladies of Personal Finance on International Women’s Day
The folks at How To Save Money shared their top picks for the best credit cards in Canada. Their pick for the best credit card in Canada – for cash back – remains in my wallet. You can find that one on my Deals page actually where I earn over $600 cash back every year!
Outstanding interview from the Rational Reminder duo with Dr. William Bernstein. I always look forward to buying more stocks or ETFs when the market corrects – but it takes time to train your investing brain and it’s not always easy.
The Retirement Manifesto is scaling back. Good on him after running the blog for so many years.
I can relate! Well done Fritz.
Fine work on Family Money Saver – highlighting there is already $140 billion lost in Bitcoin – that is likely never going to be found.
$140 Billion in Bitcoin are Lost at the Bottom of the Ocean Forever
“If your risk tolerance is high enough, that leaves 10% to 20% for a more adventurous “explore” allocation that could go into more speculative alternatives.”, writes Jonathan Chevreau.
Learn more about how to master core and explore in Jon’s latest article with Dale Roberts and other fine contributors at MoneySense here.
Reader question of the week (adapted slightly for the site!)
Hi Mark,
Love your site and posts. I am curious to know your feelings on the fairly new product from Vanguard called VRIF. It looks appealing on the surface to maintain a 4% return without eroding your initial investment. If a person didn’t want to worry about rebalancing etc., but wanted to have a reliable return on investment, I mean would VRIF be an option? What about a dividend ETF?
Thanks!
Great questions and thanks for your kind words.
VRIF seems like an interesting product for sure, but the concept is not new. Monthly income funds have been available for decades. In fact, I wrote about the concept here many years ago.
I argued a decade ago that investors might be better off with a small basket of equity and bond ETFs in retirement, not only to rebalance their portfolio as needed but to save on major fees charged by some expensive mutual fund products on the market!
When it comes to monthly income ETFs, I’ve liked ZMI for some time, a fund of BMO funds that generates about 4% yield rather consistently.
My understanding is VRIF is targeting the magical 4% distribution rate but that doesn’t mean it will always deliver. Equity returns as part of VRIF will largely dictate that I think.
One thing to consider with VRIF or any income fund, is if you’re a retiree with a RRIF (Registered Retirement Income Fund) you will need to sell units given RRIF minimum withdrawal rates exceed 4% for any RRIF after age 65. See table below.
Source: MD Management; does not include RRIF withdrawals changes related to pandemic; they are lower. For 2020 only, the RRIF minimum originally calculated has been reduced by 25 per cent.
Therefore, based on that, it would seem to make sense this VRIF product could have a decent home in a taxable account whereby you are not forced to sell units unlike a RRIF schedule would dictate to you. Something to consider as part of asset location?
I think Justin Bender touched on this as well in this video since it focused on VRIF entirely!
To answer your questions – a reliable return in retirement is not really guaranteed in my book unless you have a pension or an annuity.
One way you can generate a decent, predictable income stream however, is by establishing a modestly-sized portfolio; keeping your withdrawal rate within a modest range; likely balancing some risk within it (a mix of stocks and bonds or cash); devising a plan to sell assets periodically to meet your income needs. Keep some cash on the side just in case.
On the subject of reliable income streams in retirement, you might be very interested in this recent case study on Cashflows & Portfolios: this investor is worried about a different type of risk in retirement – OAS clawbacks and therefore when to take CPP.
Certainly based on my learnings from others (since I’m not in retirement yet), a 3%-4% withdrawal rate is likely more than safe whether you are using VRIF or any other low-cost, balanced fund. But risk tolerance is very challenging to navigate. I hope to write more articles about that over time since it’s something I need to navigate myself…
Sure, a dividend ETF is also another way to accomplish your income stream goal but that also comes with some risks since not all stocks nor are all dividends derived from said stocks – always guaranteed.
That’s my plan since this transition will personally help me financially and psychologically: I won’t eat too much (if any) capital in the early retirement years and I will also remain engaged in some work to keep my mind and body active.
I guess to wrap my thoughts about VRIF or any other fund product, I think as part of any retirement planning you really need to figure out what your spending plan is first (with some buffer) and then go from there into product selection to meet that income stream need. Plans should always come before products in my book.
I hope that response helps a bit!
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Mark
My name is Mark Seed - the founder, editor and owner of My Own Advisor. As my own DIY financial advisor, I've surpassed my goal and now investing beyond the 7-figure portfolio to start semi-retirement with. Find out how, what I did, and what you can learn to tailor your own financial independence path. Join the newsletter read by thousands each day, always FREE.
Ya, 7.5-9% returns would be thrilling. I’m planning for closer to 1/3 of that.
Ha, yes, well, if you have bonds for sure I can appreciate that.
$0 bonds here but slowly building my cash wedge for semi-retirement since I will want some just in case….
Thoughts? Enough?
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/how-much-cash-should-you-keep/
What do you think might be good inflationary investments for the coming years? REITs?
Mark
LOL. Bonds won’t be great for sure, but they won’t drag it down that much. It’s also equities concerning me. I think 4-5% is all a person can expect for a lot of years from them. 7.5-9% longer term average fogettaboutit. To me that’s dreamland, but I hope I am wrong.
Its too early to be concerned with anything beyond a basic cash wedge for you, when you’re working FT and planning to work for a lot of years PT. When that income stops its a different reality though and be prepared several years earlier is wise.
Don’t have that answer figured out yet. Reits possibly part of that. Its something I’m working out since FI is dirt for now.
Ya, I just replied to May on that. I think at best, one can expect 5-5.5% from a balanced portfolio before inflation, so likely 3-4% for real returns. Heck, if I get 4% or higher real returns in the coming decades I will be thrilled!
Thanks. It’s hard to tell sometimes if I’m overly conservative or aggressive. It depends on the day!
1. If I continue to work FT, then a small cash wedge/small emergency fund makes sense. We’re at $10K now + a bit as we ramp up.
2. As soon as I enter PT work, I hope to enter that starting with $50K cash wedge/larger emergency fund. That our near-term goal in 3-5 years ish to have saved up – so we have work to do.
3. As soon as we consider entering full-on retirement, 5+ years? – I wonder if I might need more than $50K cash wedge. I haven’t gotten “there” yet in my thinking yet! Surely pros and cons of that. It really depends if I have a small blog income stream then at time of full-on retirement per se. If I do, I suspect $50K savings/emergency fund along with other sources of retirement income might be just fine.
As I always say, it depends! Ha.
I agree with #1 and #2 and probably lean to more on #3 (MORE!) with full on retirement depending on timing/amounts of bond like income streams come – work pension, OAS, CPP and how that correlates to your spending withdrawals of assets etc. You may not need a bigger safety net.
I’ve done a ton of reading including Fred V. on this stuff. Safe to say its all educated “guesses”. You know in the back of my mind I’m always thinking what do we really “need” to do with investments.
I’ll be thrilled to be able to continue our current retirement lifestyle so far with pretty low withdrawal rates and which doesn’t count OAS and CPP so that “might” be a buffer.
It depends here too, and always seems to be a good response!
I think anyone that has done as well as you would be thrilled. Understatement.
Thanks. You’re very kind.
And you have pretty much….already.
You are very conservative. I am planning on 5% return and 3% inflation. If lower return than that, then I won’t be able to retire yet. I am still hopeful maybe I could get 6% return then we might be able to help the kids when they are in need. Well, we will see what would happen.
Last year proved my portfolio is not diversified enough and right now I am adjusting it to include more US technology stocks. As we have discussed here before, tech is where the future is. I have thought about buying Nasdaq index, but looking at some components like tsla still in huge bubble, I decided to buy individual stocks instead. Have initiated positions in AAPL and MSFT. Will add other blue chips like AMZN, GOOGL etc. gradually.
Perhaps. I think more along these lines: https://findependencehub.com/to-infinity-and-beyond-whither-the-efficient-frontier/?utm_source=FindependenceHub.com+Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=409bfd3549-FHUB_RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_47a7dc54ad-409bfd3549-242384781
I am currently 67% equity, 33% FI but that floats around a bit, so expect lower return than all equity. When retiring 7 years ago I originally had expected 3.5%, with 2% inflation. Projected real return 1.5% for us, and now I think maybe 1% due to the interest rate box government has built. I kept the default VPW spreadsheet, but did another using my own numbers. Still says we “could” withdraw 4.3% now. Over time and as CPP/OAS come on stream still planning for equity stake to rise. Governments globally are determined to manipulate and do anything to boost markets, grow debt, suppress interest rates so a person has to work with that. Maybe it will work. But it feels more like a house of cards. Booming markets in a recession, pandemic, record govt and public debt, record dip in GDP, high unemployment, higher savings???? We all know there will be boom years, bust years so having a good steady income is important along with some flexibility in lifestyle to weather leaner times if needed. So we plan conservatively and hope for better, which we’ve had….. so far.
Your projections may well work great. Projected real return of 2% is much less than what it seems many think, and not far from my projections. Good plan on ensuring some tech. My US is set it and forget it VTI, a bit of QQQ, internationally VXUS.
Cheers.
Yes, good points, there will be booming years but I suspect the future is clouded with inflation.
With debt fueled by low rates for far too long, maybe I have it wrong since I’m working on investing while being debt-free at the same time. 3.5 years to go so the mortgage calculator tells me. Very worse case, I think if I lose my job, any payment to me would payoff the mortgage for good so feeling more positive about out debt-load now vs. many years ago when it was over $300,000. I had a few sleepless nights!
Any real return of 2%+ is great I think with inflation coming. I feel it’s inevitable.
Smart and simple with VTI + VXUS and some QQQ as a small tech growth kicker when it rebounds again. Very smart. Trying to get more organized myself 🙂
Thanks. Good points you’re making too. I agree inflation will finally get more real and 2%+ real return will be very good.
Inflation and future higher taxes from those that have are definitely considerations. I bought some PRA yesterday as some FI was maturing and may continue further on that path for more inflation fighting. Working on a few more tweaks on that now and as strategy to offset weak FI options. And got some QBTC.u a while back for a lark.
Maybe re: paying down debt now. Perhaps I tend to look at it differently than some. You now have phenomenal resources to save, invest and build assets, and have probably already won that race. You also have a golden opportunity to rid yourself of the debt burden at these ridiculous rates too (when many are relying on that for MORE debt and/or leveraged investing), soon giving yourself the FIWOOT and peace of mind you seek. To me you’ve chosen a great path. I’m biased from having debt when rates were high, but life begins (control) when you’re debt free.
Rates are likely to rise, higher inflation is likely to happen. But markets always surprise when not expected, like they have for years now. Interesting to stay informed, take action if needed, and watch it unfold.
Rates are likely to be higher, later, for sure I think. It has to come eventually.
That means having no debt will be a huge liberation for us. 3.5 years at last mortgage check.
I’ve heard life begins when the debt gone.
It seems so but almost nothing would surprise me.
It will be liberating.
I’m sure you’re tired of hearing that. Lol
I have rerun my numbers using 3.5% return and 2% inflation. Looks like I can still make it with a tighter budget if I retire now. We have saved more than I predicted due to higher income and less than expected expenses (pandemic). Pretty safe if I retire two years later according to my original plan.
This year is pretty good so far for me, while last year was bad. I am thinking to retire early now we see the light of the tunnel to end the pandemic. Well, maybe better to continue to work for a little while. I have been struggling with the question “Retire now or not” for a while, my answer is swinging between YES and NO depending on my mood, weather (if it’s good more want to retire), market, etc. LOL.
My majority investment will remain on the dividend growth path. Last year in March and April, it really comforts me cut/cancel of dividends still not much. My investment income last year can easily cover my expenses last year. As I have moved quite a lot of FI to Equity this year, it has increased 25% this year comparing to the end of last year. I figure if investment income can at least cover my barebone expenses, then I can sleep pretty tight during a market crash.
The biggest loss of dividends last year for me is from REITs: HR.UN and REI.UN. I am thinking hard if I should continue to invest in REITs. Especially these two didn’t raise dividends for a long period already before that.
Did you see this post May?
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/determining-your-financial-independence-number/
Also, I have launched another site called Cashflows and Portfolios. You might be interested in our services! Flip me an email if so. No obligation of course but we can run some numbers for you and send you a report.
FWIW, I ditched some HR.UN a while back and put those proceeds into RioCan. I’m still bullish on them to survive this pandemic crisis.
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/august-2020-dividend-income-update/
That dividend cut hurt and I said never again with them. But who knows, they may thrive again??
I wish I could predict the future.
Yeah, I do have a FI number and already achieved that but I feel the need to adjust it once I am here. LOL. I have a new number and I should be there end of this year if everything goes smoothly. I figure if we were forced to retire then that will be it, we should be able to survive with current portfolio.
Sounds great May. The fact that your mindset is already considering PT work means you’re getting “there”. Very well done.
Nice work May. Sounds like you’re in great shape.
Good for you in making the move to more equities and nice it confirms your d g path is what you want.
If you are still unsure Is going PT at work (semi retire) an option for you now? Maybe it’s a way to dip your toe in but still have some more opportunity for building assets. I did PT for 2.5 years and it was great for me and for my wife.
Ya, I’ve heard that from folks – PT work is a great way to start the transition and worse case, you have your foot in the door if you want to go back to more work and/or bored and/or want the purpose? Seems like a good plan to me and something I aspire to do, my employer willing. They read this site!!
Our company didn’t have PT option for my role before. Maybe the policy changed now with the pandemic. I will for sure check it out.
I figure investment in a big part is emotional play. So meeting my investment target and sleeping tight is more important than having a higher return. Even tech is the future, I won’t ever have tech being a major part of my portfolio. I am working on a percentage of how much tech I should have.
Good luck on PT.
Yes, being able to sleep and be mentally relaxed about your investment choices is important, and for some of us that means not reaching for a higher return, or avoiding stretching to meet spending needs/wants. That’s me for sure.
Tech is playing an ever increasing role in our lives but that can make it more trendy especially with younger investors. Often that means overpriced stock so a person has to consider that. I’m not trendy and more of a late adopter but I did buy some bitcoin, though its far from early in the game. LOL My stake in QQQ is around 1.2% of assets so tiny at this point, and we have no other tech stocks.
I think a real return of 4% max is should what you can expect. Fred Vettese (i.e., very smart guy) has an excellent book you should check out May. Potentially nothing new but it does reinforce may asset decumulation concepts.
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/retirement-income-for-life-retirement-calculators/
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/retirement-income-for-life-review-and-giveaway/
In that book, he predicts inflation will hover around 2.2% but certainly could be higher for some periods of time.
So, I would anticipate inflation personally around 3%.
Vettese doesn’t see where a mix of stocks and bonds (i.e., your typical 60/40 or even more modern 70/30 portfolio) will return more than 5-5.5% in the coming decades so I’m basing my projections on that.
You are correct, more tech is the future for sure. QQQ or ZQQ or XQQ for CDN $$ seems to be a good bet. I hope tech goes lower soon 🙂
VRIF looks like it could be interesting for those who want a balanced portfolio and steady payouts, but I suspect many of us would rather have a higher equity exposure and dividend income.
Mark, have you looked into Manulife’s new CDIV (4.91% yield, 0.25% mgmt fee) and UDIV (3.15% yield, which is pretty high for a US ETF, and 0.28% mgmt fee)? These could be an alternative to other dividend ETFs which tend to have very high sector concentrations. I’d love to hear any thoughts from you or anyone else. I’m thinking of them for someone who wants income but does not want to touch capital. .
It does seem like an interesting product but I don’t know really anyone that owns it yet (VRIF).
You know, I have not looked into those but I can appreciate many retirees (my future self included) do not want to spend too much capital in the early years of retirement or semi-retirement for fear of running out of money. It’s a concern for us hence the plan to live off dividends and distributions in the early years of semi-retirement.
Maybe I’m being too conservative!?
I know that ‘manufactured dividends’ from selling capital is more tax efficient than dividends themselves, but there’s something about digging into capital that retirees really have a hard time with. I hope to meet my basic needs with CPP/OAS and dividends, but know I can sell capital to top up any wants as I see fit.
Hello Mark. You will see 10000 just can’t tell you when. You help people that’s very nice and makes the planet a better place. This year we saw the biggest short squeeze of my life time 64, Game stop. Another one that’s happening at least I think is in energy. The shorts got to buy it back and they still don’t own it. So many active fund managers owned zero energy on dec 31. I wonder how many will own it on mar 31. It’s going to be very interesting for me to watch. The active management at eit.un have done a great job. When I retire I think I will get some of their help to blow down by savings, like 15%.
Thanks for that Rob and I hope so on the readership. But more importantly, it’s nice to be able to contribute, help others a bit, and talk with like-minded folks.
All the best to you!
Mark
Contrats on reaching the 5,000 milestone! I realized that I’ve been reading for years and have referred this site to numerous friends and colleagues but failed to subscribe myself – I figured just clicking everyday was enough, but I’ve registered to help push the numbers up.
Thanks for link to Nick’s article – for me, couch potato indexing has worked well and the beauty of that approach is that I never have investment performance envy! I know it will track the returns of the market and I don’t have to check or question it, although I still do of course. It has been very liberating compared to before I started down this path. My biggest regret was a period of about 12-18 months around 2014 where I sat out of the market based on concerns of market correction/timing and indecision about portfolio allocations. I was needlessly overthinking things but needed to go through that to have the confidence I have now. Once set up, I felt a great sense of relief and I’ve been fully invested since. Discipline and sticking to the strategy are easy words to say but tough to follow in real time.
Thanks for sharing Bart – really, very much appreciated.
As for Nick’s article I thought it was a gem since too many times I’ve heard that either you index invest or else. I get very annoyed by such rhetoric. 🙂
I’ve remained fully invested almost for 11-12 years now but my challenge is I like to tinker with the portfolio. Over time, I’ve learned to buy and hold blue chip stocks and remain invested. I’ve also learned/appreciated more the merits of some ETFs for extra diversification. I believe XAW, VTI and QQQ in my portfolio are good examples.
You are correct that “sticking to the strategy are easy words to say but tough to follow in real time.”
All of us I’m sure are prone to behavioural biases, if we are honest. Agreed about the indexing dogma – it works for me but I’ve learned from so many hear that you can be just as successful or more so with individual securities. Your hybrid model makes a lot of sense to me, and is the model a lot of IIROC-licensed advisors follow.
Thanks. I’ll keep you and others posted if I change my mind on the plan!
What’s your take on Walmart , under130US last week? Aggressively buy back of $20billon over next yr+. Also, 1+ Trillion dollar payout passed by Biden adm yesterday. Good time to buy more? Whatcha think?
Tempting but I really have no money to invest unless I do it in a taxable account. I’ve thought about owning WMT but I do own it indirectly via VTI.
You’re right, it could, maybe jump with any stimulus money Bob?
Hi Mark, congrats on reaching 5K well deserved you do provide us with some solid perspective on a broad range of topics I find something of use pretty much every week, so thanks for that.
On the topic of risk the one thing your site (and others) never seem to really talk about is valuation or when to buy and more importantly sell. To me sitting on overvalued stocks is one of the biggest risks to a portfolio, it is something I worry more about then if my allocation is right or not. So I had a chuckle when I read the best dividend stock list by Tawcan because I just sold out of several of them not because they are not good or even great companies but if I can pocket 15+ years of dividend growth I will (i.e CNR).and recycle the capital to fund other/better opportunity investments.in my registered accounts (taking a page from the Brookfield playbook). Don’t be afraid to take profits, gains are only gains when you sell until then it’s just funny money and a liability..
As a result I only have a limited number of core (conviction) holdings in my dividend portfolio, in general they need a >4% yield a >5% DG rate and make up >3% of my total portfolio.. I got rid of all my smaller holdings and moved more $$ into higher yielding ETF’s an income funds. Income is up well over $5K annually even with some proceeds not yet reinvested. In short accepting low yield and being too passive also introduces risks IMO. I’d rather fail b/c of an action than inaction but that’s just my OCD talking.
Take care and looking forward to seeing your next post.
Ben
Kind words, thanks Ben!
Ya, I probably don’t write about selling very much since I don’t 🙂
But, that doesn’t mean to your point there is not merit is taking some gains from time to time if you feel redeployment of capital could yield higher returns. I guess I’m more of the buy and hold and buy some more mindset. That approach has worked out well financially for me since I’m meeting my goals so no need to change my style really.
I’m a big fan of CNR and Brookfield companies like BEPC and BIPC so I hope to be buying more of them in the coming years in fact – not selling those.
Over a cold beer, I might work on my next dividend income post later today. Stay tuned!
Mark
My investing preference is to Ignore the market. Beating, matching or any other comparison to Indexes only increases ones stress level and means little to ones real investing goal, at least mine. How much cash your investments generate each year, is your income growing and are you getting closer to your income goal, that’s what I consider a meaningful investment result.
Yes, which is smart because if you have a plan, it’s working for you, it’s meeting your needs whether that’s your basket of stocks or GICs or other – why change?
Your goals are your goals. It’s that simple and you shouldn’t let others tell you otherwise.
Hey Mark,
Thanks so much for the mention! And I’ve been doing that glove under the arm drill too!
Helps me lead with my body more than my arms and hands.
Keep up the great content!
Cheers!
Jeff
Thanks Jeff! We’ll have to connect on some golf subjects at some point 🙂
All the best.
Mark
Congratulations Mark on reaching a 5000 subscribers and hopefully soon you’ll double that because you’re helping a lot of Canadians to make a better choice when it comes to their future and reitrement , i enjoy all the links that you add from different bloggers it keeps me busy all weekend when i have a quiet time to read 🙂 as for William bernstein I read his book ” The four pillars of investing” and it was one of the best that I’ve read although my all time favorite remains David chilton ” The wealthy Barber ” and the “Wealthy barber returns” 🙂
so yeah Thanks in all what you do and I must say i was influenced by you and I sold my holdings in ZUT and ZEB in my tfsa and i bought shares in TD RY AQN , FTS and Emera and Also TRP and Telus 🙂 I’m so excited about this so yeah no more paying fees for etfs in my tfsa but i kept my RRSP fully invested in Etfs.
Thanks very much Gus, kind words and always nice to hear from readers!
I’ve found an approach that works for me – a number of dividend payers from Canada, a few from the U.S. (re: ABBV, JNJ, PG, VZ, BLK, MSFT, and a few others) and then everything else is a diversified and well-known ETF.
Many devout indexers have mentioned my plan is risky, foolish and in the past, “bound to fail”. I have disagreed. That conviction has helped me over time.
Mistakes, you bet, I’ve made them and I’m sure I will make more but hopefully less $$ lost or other!
I like all of those stocks personally and unless the world falls apart (always possible given the world we live in…) I will continue to own those CDN stocks you’ve mentioned and continue to build up my ETF war chest for semi-retirement. 🙂 I will keep you and 4,997 other folks posted.
Next stop = 10,000 subscribers!
Have a safe, great weekend.
Mark,
One question in mind when it comes to excellent Canadian stocks is CNR , at work we deal with CNR and also CP and looking at the returns of CP its twice as much as CNR but for some reason CP doesn’t get the attention at all.
just wondering why 🙂
Interesting comment in that I might buy some CP in my taxable account at some point. I own a bit of CNR but I also want to buy more of that this year.
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/5-stocks-i-want-to-buy-in-2021/
I think CNR gets more attention because they have a larger network – coast to coast to coast? CP more east to west.
Thanks for the mention Mark! Appreciate your input on the piece. Have a great weekend.
All the best!