Posts by Robb Engen
Two Types Of Overconfident Investors
I started investing in individual stocks shortly after the Great Financial Crisis ended in 2009. I picked an investing strategy that closely resembled the Dogs of the TSX, buying the 10 highest yielding Canadian dividend stocks. As you can imagine, the share prices of these companies got hammered during the stock market crash so I…
Read MoreWhy You Should (or Shouldn’t) Defer OAS To Age 70
I’ve long advocated that anyone who expects to live a long life should consider deferring their Canada Pension Plan to age 70. Doing so can increase your CPP payments by nearly 50% – an income stream that is both inflation-protected and payable for life. If taking CPP at 70 is such a good idea, why…
Read MoreTop ETFs and Model Portfolios for Canadian Investors
The investing landscape has certainly evolved for the better over the past two decades. Gone are the days when the only way to invest was to work with an expensive broker or mutual fund salesperson. Self-directed investing platforms, robo-advisors, and all-in-one ETFs have democratized investing – making it cheap and accessible for investors to build…
Read MoreHow To Choose The Right Asset Allocation ETF
Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz famously said that diversification is the only free lunch in investing. A portfolio concentrated in just a handful of stocks, or one that holds only Canadian or US stocks, may have a much wider range of outcomes than a more broadly diversified portfolio that includes stocks from every country. Most investors…
Read MoreWhy It Would Be Ludicrous To Invest In These Model Portfolios
Arguably no one has done more to educate Canadian do-it-yourself investors than the PWL Capital teams of Dan Bortolotti and Justin Bender, and Benjamin Felix and Cameron Passmore. It began more than a decade ago with Dan’s incredibly popular Canadian Couch Potato blog and podcast. Since then, Dan teamed up with PWL’s Justin Bender, who…
Read MoreForget About Asset Location: Why You Should Hold The Same Asset Mix In All Accounts
Much has been written about optimizing your portfolio(s) for tax efficiency by placing certain investments or asset classes in certain accounts. This tax planning strategy is called asset location. In this article I’m going to explain what asset location is all about, what optimal asset location can achieve, and why you should forget about it…
Read MoreVanguard All Equity ETF (VEQT): My New One-Ticket Investing Solution
Vanguard changed the self-directed investing game in Canada with the launch of its new suite of asset allocation ETFs. Now investors can get an ultra low cost, globally diversified portfolio of equities and bonds with just one product. The funds first came in three flavours – VCNS, VBAL, and VGRO – each with a different…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Pitfalls of Leaving Your Advisor Edition
A commonly held view in the do-it-yourself investing community is that to maximize returns one simply needs to cut ties with their expensive advisor and manage their own portfolio. On the surface, this makes sense. Costs matter, so if you can slash your investment fees from 2% down to 0.5% or lower your returns will…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Stocks Fall to Prices Not Seen Since June Edition
Hopefully by now my financial planning clients and blog readers have been conditioned to ignore short term drops in the market – even big ones like we experienced this past week. The reason why stocks have such attractive long-term returns is because they ARE risky to own in the short-term. That’s a feature, not a…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Let’s Talk About Rental Properties Edition
A new report issued last week by condo research firm Urbanation Inc. shed light on a problem that has plagued real estate investors for years – the vast majority of rental property owners are bleeding cash flow. According to the report (G&M subs), which looked specifically at new condo investors in Toronto, more than 80%…
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