Weekend Reading – Crushing markets, interviews, mentions, financial tools and #money stuff

Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition where you can find some great personal finance and investing articles to save, invest and prosper.

It was a busy week on the site…I managed to pump out these three posts:

I initiated yet another giveaway on my site – The Practical Guide to Financial Independence.  Enter for your chance to win one of three books as part of this giveaway.

I wrote about how I’ve tried to curb some of my investing behaviour gaps.

I discussed one of the big reasons why I try and max out my Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) before other accounts here.

Thanks for reading and supporting the brand – I enjoy reading every comment on the site.  Have a great weekend and share this site with a friend!

A reader pointed me to this article – why this investor really wants to crush the efficient market hypothesis.  There is really no true “passive investing” approach – there is absolutely some active money management in everything we do.  “But at the end of the day indexers should know that asset allocation decisions are the primary driving factor in returns and almost all indexers are involved in a form of active “asset picking” that will drive their results.”

Thanks to Dan and the team at StockTrades.ca for this interview.

Karl is kicking financial a$$ on Million Dollar Journey – sharing his new worth update here.

RateHub was very kind to recommend you follow this site and 14 other Canadian personal finance bloggers in 2017.

Tawcan wrote about his experiences on an extreme travel budget.

Michael James on Money reviewed and liked the CEO of everything.

Dividend Growth Investing & Retirement shared his dividend income update.

My friend Jim Yih shared some new financial planning data for 2017.

I’m rather skeptical about this bill – to help and protect disabled Canadians.  I wish I didn’t feel that way but I’m not sure Big Cajun Man feels any differently.

Canadians seems slow to automate their financial life.   That’s too bad because that’s one of the great ways you can accelerate debt payments and wealth creation – by taking emotions out of money decisions.  That was my input into ModernAdvisor’s blogpost here.

This is how I’d manage a $1 million portfolio – a long-term goal of ours.

Thanks to Finance Blog Zone for listing my site as a top blog – and Big Cajun Man for reading it!

BCE increased their dividend by 5% this week.  That was a nice raise.

6 Responses to "Weekend Reading – Crushing markets, interviews, mentions, financial tools and #money stuff"

  1. ” continue to be lazy and leave it there.” 🙂

    My favourite saying in the whole world “Laziness breeds efficiency”

    As for dividend increases…..Way to go BEP, BIP and BPY!! Looking forward to next week with BBU and BAM.

    Disclaimer: We hold ’em all. (some of them a lot!)

    Reply
  2. re: Investing behaviour gaps — “The Summary: Bad investing behaviour is like any other bad habit – you need to kick the cycle.”
    True, unfortunately habits are incredibly difficult, on a conscious and deliberate level, to both break and form. This is yet another reason why saving and investing beginning at a young age is so important. Easier to do with an un-trenched mind than trying to dig yourself out of a 20-year hole.

    re: Crush the efficient market hypothesis — Cullen’s background is somewhat interesting. He made big bucks working for the big banks believing all the usual financial literature. The ’08 Crisis scared the heck out of him and he set off to discover — and question — how the system actually operates, in an effort to never again fall into the fear/greed trap. I think he’s done a pretty good job at overturning a lot of mossy rocks. That’s why when authors state such things as, “consistent with the modern literature”, I cringe. ‘Modern literature’ doesn’t mean it’s correct literature.

    re: Karl — split decision on this one. I stopped reading MDJ quite a while ago but I think a lot of Karl’s commentators are concerned with his very heavy concentration in real estate. It’s true, but I’ve also read enough across the board to know that diversification is for wealth preservation, and concentration is for wealth construction (e.g. all your investable assets are concentrated in public equities). Hope he can hold it together.

    re: 15 Canadian Personal Finance Bloggers to Follow — 15? Pareto will cut that down to 3 and give you more time to do other more important things.

    re: CEO of everything — long-time fan of Gail Vaz-Oxlade and her “usual very direct style”. People who are in crisis can’t afford to waste resources with gradual movements. In times of emotional crisis involving money, people require emotional support first and foremost over sensible advice (when you are distressed, not even sensible advice comes across as sensible). Apart from that, “…three weeks is a new pattern setting up to take hold…” is a great example of authors being “consistent with the modern literature” yet that modern literature, and the following author, being very wrong.

    re: Automate financial life — as stated above, instil positive habits early as possible. Making habit formation easy makes forming habits easy. Automate as much cash out of your hands as possible, once it’s where it’s supposed to be (e.g. RRSP), you’ll most likely continue to be lazy and leave it there. Automation leaves you with more brain power to spend on more important decisions, like what flavour latte to buy.

    Reply
    1. Always great to get your input…

      re: Investing behaviour gaps – very challenging to change adult behaviour. What do you do yourself for that? What do you recommend?

      re: Cullen strikes me as a contrarian = meaning he is willing to address convention thinking head-on. I like that. Big fan of this site thanks to you SST.

      re: Karl – I’m curious where your assets are split? How much % RE vs. other? In terms of home equity we’re about 26%. That’s pretty good. If I can get it to about 10-15% that’s great I think.

      GVO is good but she’s very blunt. Maybe folks who need a change – need tough love.

      Big fan of automation. I need to do more of that actually. Cheers SST.
      Mark

      Reply

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