2009 June | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

2009 Q2 Bloggers' Stock Picking Contest Update

Posted by Preet on Jun 30, 2009 | 0 comments

First a reminder: If you missed Episode Two of the W Network Expert Challenge on Sunday night, it is being re-aired tonight Wednesday, July 1st 2009 at 8:30pm on the W Network. The Financial Blogger had asked a bunch of other personal finance bloggers if they wanted to participate in a friendly stock picking contest for 2009. The criteria was to pick four securities in equal dollar amounts listed on a Canadian or American exchange (not including derivatives) to just sit on for the duration of 2009 with no changes allowed. We are to provide updates every quarter and the contest ends on the last trading day of 2009. The initial prices will be based on the closing prices of...

Collecting Commissions To Become Illegal For British Investment Advisors

Posted by Preet on Jun 29, 2009 | 5 comments

I thought it was an April Fool’s joke when I received an email today indicating that the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority had ruled that Investment Advisors will no longer be allowed to collect commissions starting in 2012. It is somewhat ironic that I had made the point earlier today that asking financial advisors to act like fiduciaries while paying them commissions is a laughable proposition, but apparently the Brits have woken up to this fact. British IAs (short for Investment Advisors), will be allowed to set their own charges for advice, which will be independent from products sold. If this were to happen in Canada, then mutual fund MERs would drop...

Twitter and Formula 2000 Contest Winner

Posted by Preet on Jun 28, 2009 | 0 comments

I know that some people have always wondered why the email updates can’t contain the blog post title in the subject field so that they can pick and choose which email updates to read (and which ones might not appeal to them). Well, I have a solution. You can follow me on Twitter instead – because from now on, every time I update the blog my twitter feed will be updated within an hour and will include the specific blog post’s title. The only problem is that if you follow a lot of people on Twitter, you may miss my posts because any new updates from your other twitter feeds will push older tweets down the list… Nonetheless – you can follow me...

Shameless Self Promotion Video

Posted by Preet on Jun 26, 2009 | 7 comments

I picked up a new webcam and some video editing software so I decided to practice putting together a video. I whipped this up quickly and it’s not polished as I was trying out the following things: 1. New webcam (Logitech Pro 9000), 2. Camtasia Studio 6 (screencasting software), 3. Windows Movie Maker (editing software), and 4. Vimeo Plus (for hosting videos). This is all being done to prepare for the Financial Fitness Course launch in September (you can pre-register to get the first two modules free by clicking here). More details to follow, in the meantime, here’s the video: (If you are not reading this on the website, click here to view the video.) And...

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Jun 25, 2009 | 5 comments

If you are new to WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com, every Friday I run a post called “A Lap Of The Blogs” which provides links to articles I found interesting and think that others may want to read for themselves. I also include some commentary on what’s going on in my personal life and a weekly “racing video” since my former life was in the auto-racing industry. The name “Lap of the Blogs” is in reference to “A Lap Of The Gods” which is an old video series which chronicled on-board footage of the world’s greatest F1 drivers lapping various racetracks from around the world. Two reminders first: 1. Episode 2 of 3 in the Ultimate W Expert Challenge airs this...

Credit Card Payoff Calculator

Posted by Preet on Jun 24, 2009 | 4 comments

Do you carry a balance on your credit cards? This handy calculator will allow you to see just how long it will take you to pay off your balance based on the payments you are making. PLUS it will also calculate what monthly payment is required to pay your balance off in a desired time period. Check it out! (If you are reading this by email, click here to visit the calculator...

Update On The Experimental Portfolio

Posted by Preet on Jun 23, 2009 | 4 comments

A few weeks ago I had mused that holding a double short pair of leveraged ETFs might be a great negative correlating investment to hold in tandem with a regular long position on a plain vanilla ETF. The double short pair would be expected to have a positive rate of return if the volatility of the underlying index was high enough, and a hypothetical backtest had shown that it could smooth overall portfolio volatility. I still want to re-iterate that you shouldn’t be playing around with this stuff unless you understand it. Having said that, I set up a live mock portfolio on June 3rd with $100,000. The strategy has added about roughly 3% of net alpha for the period to...