2009 August | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

A Hedge Fund That Returned 80% in 2008

Posted by Preet on Aug 31, 2009 | 10 comments

Unless you’ve been living on the dark side of the moon, you’ll know that most equity markets around the world absolutely tanked in 2008. Actively managed mutual funds and index funds alike suffered horrible declines. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone lost money. About 18 months ago, I wrote about a man named James Simons. I had written about him because his compensation in 2006 was $1.7 Billion – derived from his management and performance fees for managing the Renaissance Technologies Medallion Fund, a hedge fund. That year, the fund returned 79% while managing $6 Billion. Well fast forward and the Medallion Fund returned 73.70% in 2007...

Bastardization Of Indexing

Posted by Preet on Aug 30, 2009 | 2 comments

I often visit the website IndexUniverse.com, which as you can imagine has a focus on the world of indexed investments. But even though indexers are known more for their appreciation of science, facts and figures, the writers at IndexUniverse.com are really entertaining. Matt Hougan recently wrote a post titled Index Funds Behaving Badly. Here are some highlights from the article: The highest annual expense ratio for an index mutual fund in 2008: 5.49% Largest tracking error for an ETF in 2008: 11.9% The post is designed to highlight some of the not-so-flattering points about indexing. Of course, with billions of dollars flowing into index funds and ETFs, it should come...

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Aug 27, 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 sometimes 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. NOTE: you have to visit the actual website to see the embedded video...

Benjamin Graham on Investing Giveaway Contest

Posted by Preet on Aug 26, 2009 | 28 comments

This is a video blog post. Text follows below the video… If you didn’t (can’t?) watch the embedded video, then here are the highlights: McGraw Hill kindly gave me a copy of the new book “Benjamin Graham on Investing” to review and give away The book will be dry if you don’t know who Benjamin Graham is already The book is a gem if you have ever spent time looking through financial statements It is a collection of Graham’s writings between the end of the First World War and up to the stock market crash of 1929, all gathered into one book McGraw Hill have given me one copy to give away and the rules are down below If you wish to...

Your $38,000 Dog

Posted by Preet on Aug 25, 2009 | 1 comment

I’m really swamped with work so you’ll have to pardon the deluge of guest articles. I’ll get back to writing my own content shortly. In the meantime, this is a guest article by Lewis Bennett, who writes about finance for a number of websites including Remortgage.com. Lewis owns a 10-month-old German Sheppard named Frank that eats about $340 worth of dog food every year (and $165 worth of shoes). :) Your dog could end up costing you $38,000 Most Canadians would have a hard time trying to calculate the actual cost of their dogs. Dog lovers would likely say that the love and companionship that comes from their pet is priceless and could not be put in...

Great Expectations

Posted by Jim Stark on Aug 24, 2009 | 0 comments

This is a another guest article by Jim Stark. Jim Stark is a pseudonym for a practicing Canadian financial advisor. The article is written to financial advisors, but we both thought that readers of this blog would appreciate it. Take it away Jim… Great Expectations Of all the Dickensian references to choose, you’d think something more akin to Oliver Twist’s “Please sir, may I have another?” might be more apt in describing what people might reasonably be thinking about their current financial advisor. Still, it seems many financial advisors have difficulty in seeing eye to eye with the people they hope to serve and assist. My own view is that...

Capitalism: A Love Story – Michael Moore Takes On Wall Street

Posted by Preet on Aug 23, 2009 | 3 comments

Whether you question the objectiveness of Michael Moore’s documentaries or not, one thing most people will agree is that his movies are thought-provoking and make for some good entertainment at the very least. His next project takes on another big issue: the market crisis, bailouts and Wall Street in general. Capitalism: A Love Story, is set to screen at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival and scheduled for wide release on September 23rd, 2009. A brief trailer appears below. I’m definitely going to try to catch this at TIFF this...