Weekend Reading – Protecting investors, guide to Robo-Advisors and civil discussions
It’s been a hectic week so I only got one blogpost in this week: consideration to unbundle your Canadian ETF for (retirement) income since our domestic market lacks diversity. I would however not necessarily say the same thing about the U.S. or international markets – unless you have very deep pockets.
Have a great long weekend and enjoy these Weekend Reading articles!
Mark .
This article provided a take on some of the best no-frills discount brokerages in Canada.
Here is a comprehensive guide to Canada’s Robo-Advisors.
Companies like ModernAdvisor should be considered for investors who don’t have the time, patience or discipline to manage their own investments. Besides, with my promotions with ModernAdvisor I can get you money managed for FREE!
Rob Carrick believes a civil discussion about personal finance is healthy for everyone.
Where to keep your dividend stocks? Find out what one blogger thinks here. This is my approach here.
Holy Potato liked Carl Richard’s latest book – The One-Page Financial Plan. I thought this was a good book as well and provided a review and giveaway of this book here.
Dividend Growth Investor asked: what are your investment goals? We have a few and I should write a post about those.
Enjoy your weekend!
Mark
Hi Mark,
ZDH seemed to be one of a few international “dividend” efts. Assuming it holds more dividend payers versus other Int’l efts. I will have to research more. Thanks for your list!
Enjoy the balance of the long weekend
Thanks Chuck. You as well. To my knowledge there are not many international dividend ETFs.
Hi Mark,
do you or your readers have any comments on ZDH or similar for Int’l Dividend growth?
Thanks
Thanks for the inclusion, been running on vacation time for the past little while, and enjoying the summer. Hope yours was a blast as well
All the best to you as well.
re: CSA regulatory bodies — I recently worked in the financial industry for a few years (after years of fence sitting) and can tell you from first-hand experience that, exactly as the article states, the regulations/compliance are great but the enforcement is abysmal. Even within the firm for which I worked, I witnessed and confronted blatant and deliberate wrong doings conducted with zero disciplinary measures.
16% of fines collected…9% of complaints investigated…it’s a flaccid joke. Finance is filthy “industry” and the less interaction and engagement an investor has with it, the better (i.e. become Your Own Advisor!).
A good example of when things do work, is the case (which took three years to conclude) against Ed Rempel (of MDJ infamy):
http://www.mfda.ca/enforcement/hearings13/CS201348.pdf and http://www.mfda.ca/enforcement/cases13/201348.html
An interesting note, however, is that Ed has now opened up his fee-only financial planner website but nary a word on the site about his offenses, sanctions, penalties. Slimey by omission and a pretty good representation of the characters which inhabit the financial sector (i.e. driven by career risk).
If you are going to work with an advisor etc, here’s the IIROC site and the MFDA site where you can search for disciplinary cases (by name):
http://www.iiroc.ca/industry/enforcement/Pages/Search-Disciplinary-Cases.aspx
http://www.mfda.ca/enforcement/hearingschedule.html
However, as previously stated, with a laughable 9% of claims investigated (how many brought to fruition?)…the site might not be worth the time.
Happy Loooong Weekend! 🙂
Thanks for those links….I have some reading to do this weekend now 🙂
Those are some sad stats. A joke is an understatement. This is part of the reason why I have the blog I do, and became My Own (financial) Advisor – I was tired on not knowing what I really should know as an investor.
Thanks for the mention Mark!
Enjoy that cold one. I need to check my local store and see if they have it.
I did!
Thanks for the mention Mark. Have a great long weekend.
Same!
Carl Richards book review: “if you were expecting to walk out with a step-by-step guide for creating a detailed financial plan that mapped out how much you had to save in which baskets, you’ll be disappointed.”
After reading the above book, follow up with: Investing in One Lesson By Mark Skousen
Michael: ” I started out too conservatively and quickly evolved to looking for big wins.”
He was probably much smarter than most who start out looking for the big wins and move into conservative investments later such as funds.
Michael puts the odds in his favour my indexing, as do my indexers I believe. I also believe there is more risk with individual stock investing but with more potential reward. When it comes to Canadian market the gamble isn’t that large IMO – as long as you are basically creating your own index of many stocks.
DGI: “An investment that can provide both decent yield today, and the prospect for dividend growth is more valuable than the investment that provides simply current yield.”
This is the key to achieving sufficient income during retirement. What is not mentioned in his article is that your yield % can grow over time if you invest regularly and take advantage of market dips. In other words $1Mil today with a yield of 3% will only generate $30k, but money invested over time in DG stocks and dividends reinvested will generate a higher yield than current yield. When we initially set up drips for our grand kids their yield was 3.35%. Small amounts were invested over time with dividends reinvested and regular dividend increases, their current yield on invested dollars is now 5.67%. So if the investment totaled $1Mil over the same period they would be receiving $57,670 per year, not $30,000.
DGI: “Reinvesting dividends back into the same company without taking into consideration valuation factors does not seem to be helpful in the goal of living off dividend income in the most efficient and effective way.”
I disagree with this statement because even small amounts reinvested regularly will compound into larger amounts over time. Certainly if one is adding money each month\quarter than one can add the dividends and invest in the stock of choice or choose the one with the best evaluation. But with automatic reinvestment you will buy during highs and lows and it will grow your yield. Also you won’t miss an investment if no money is added.
Cannew,
Notice I didn’t say not to reinvest dividends regularly. The article is not saying that you should not reinvest dividends regularly – it tells you to be mindful of valuations when reinvesting. It is very interesting to me that any time I mention this, people always assume I am against regular reinvestment of dividends, which is simply wrong.
I am against reinvesting dividends automatically if the valuations are on the stock providing the dividend are high. For example, I would not reinvest dividends for MKC at say 30 times earnings.
I am better off to use the dividends to buy something else that is “cheaper”. In other words, I am still reinvesting dividends, just being smart about the valuation.
Now if your dividends come from a stock that is fairly valued, it may be easier to just keep reinvesting there.
Thanks for the clarification. I DRIP almost everything I can to keep my portfolio on autopilot. Stock valuation is very subjective and time consuming I find. Happy investing and thanks for reading DGI 🙂
This is what I am banking on….that capital invested can churn out income and that capital keeps rising over time thanks to dividend increases for inflation-fighting power.