Around the Blogosphere

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) made headlines last week when its housing market outlook predicted that national housing prices would fall 9-18% over the coming months due to the coronavirus crisis. This week, Canada’s largest default insurer took significant steps to change its underwriting policies for insured mortgages.  The following changes, which take effect…

Will we see a housing market crash in 2020 and beyond? The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) published its housing market outlook this week and, well, their forecast for home sales and prices look pretty bleak. Housing starts are expected to see a decline of between 51% to 75%, and not begin to recover…

Stock markets around the world continue to climb higher after bottoming out on March 23. In what seems like ages ago, markets fell harder and faster than ever before as the world grappled with a global pandemic and stay-at-home orders. The TSX, as represented by iShares XIU, fell more than 32%, while the S&P 500…

When it comes to money, no one has it completely figured out. We can learn a lot from our own failures and from the mistakes of others. Stories like the one shared by Kind Wealth founder David O’Leary – who filed for bankruptcy at age 25 – highlight the fact that no matter who we…

The 4% rule is a framework to think about how to safely draw down your retirement savings without fear of outliving your money. It was developed in 1994 by financial advisor William Bengen, who concluded that retirees could safely withdraw 4% annually from their portfolio over a 30 year period without running out of money.…

I check my credit card statements often and yesterday noticed a charge of $500+ from Amazon.ca that was linked to my wife’s card number (secondary cardholder on this account). This was strange, not only because we didn’t authorize the purchase but also because this particular card was not linked to our Amazon account.  What we…

Last month I wrestled with my pension decision and opted to take the lump sum (commuted value) rather than a deferred pension at age 65. That decision meant forgoing a ~$15,000 per year pension in retirement. Instead, I would receive a $290,000 lump sum – $134,000 in a locked-in retirement account and the remaining $156,000…

The recent stock market crash and plunging interest rates may have some investors scrambling for safe havens. Stocks fell by as much as 35 percent (before recovering about half of those losses), while the interest rate on GICs and savings accounts in particular have dropped in lock-step with the Bank of Canada’s emergency rate cuts.…

One knock against passive investing is that while it’s great to match the market’s performance in good times, it’s not as fun to watch your portfolio drop when the outlook turns bearish. Indeed, index investors like me have seen their portfolios take a 20-25 percent hit in a relatively short period during the COVID-19 crisis.…

A dead cat bounce is a temporary resurgence in stock prices after a substantial fall. The phrase originated on Wall Street, derived from the idea that “even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height.”  That’s what investors saw last week as stock markets rallied for three days before slumping again…