2009 October | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Oct 29, 2009 | 7 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 – it...

Sovereign Wealth Funds

Posted by Preet on Oct 27, 2009 | 2 comments

You’ve heard of mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds, but have you heard of Sovereign Wealth Funds? It may be surprising to find out that sovereign wealth funds (SWFs for short) are projected to have over $10 trillion in assets by 2012. What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund? A sovereign wealth fund is essentially an investment fund set up by a government for the purpose of long term investment of surplus funds. Not all governments have SWFs, because as you may have noticed as of late, not all governments have surpluses. For example, the only Canadian provincial government with an SWF is Alberta – owing to it’s royalties on natural resources which have...

ETFs with Few Holdings… What's the point?

Posted by Preet on Oct 26, 2009 | 6 comments

Jonathan Chevreau notes on his Wealth Boomer blog that BMO has launched 8 new ETFs to complement the 4 they launched earlier this year. I took a look at the new kids on the block and immediately I gravitated towards ZEB.to which seeks to track the S&P/TSX Equal Weight Diversified Banks Index. This ETF has an MER of 0.55% and it holds only six stocks in equal positions: BMO, CIBC, Royal Bank, Scotia, TD and National Bank. As Norm Rothery pointed out in a Wealthy Boomer video interview, with the advent of discount brokerages you might be better off buying the underlying stocks yourself. For example, suppose you had $100,000 to invest in this strategy. You could either...

Commodity Trading Advisors

Posted by Preet on Oct 25, 2009 | 2 comments

I wrote a little bit recently on Managed Futures and there seemed to be a fair amount of interest from readers in learning a little bit more so today I’m going to introduce the concept of CTAs – Commodity Trading Advisors. What Is A Commodity Trading Advisor? A CTA is a US-specific registration for advisors or firms who provide advice or management on portfolios using derivative instruments (futures, forwards, options). An advisor or firm may advise or execute derivatives trading without being registered as a CTA if they deal with less than 15 clients or only very rarely use these types of securities. CTAs generally use one of three trading styles: 1)...

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Oct 22, 2009 | 8 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 – it...

Does A Lower Equity Premium Mean Lower Allocations To Stocks?

Posted by Preet on Oct 21, 2009 | 3 comments

There are many people who have built seemingly compelling cases for a lower equity premium for the future (“equity premium” is the difference in return over the long term of stocks versus the “risk free rate” which is usually the return on treasury bills or cash). But does that mean that people shouldn’t put money into the stock market? I would argue that so long as capitalism still works, then the overall capital markets will always adjust so that on average it makes sense for enterprises to borrow money in the expectation that they can invest the proceeds into productive endeavours that will earn them a higher rate of return than the...

Do You Want To Be On The W Network with me?

Posted by Preet on Oct 20, 2009 | 8 comments

It still feels pretty surreal, but after entering the W Network’s Ultimate W Expert Challenge in Fall of 2008 you may remember I made it to the finals of the competition and actually ended up being selected as the overall winner. Part of the prize was a development deal with W to create a show that I would host. Well, the production company (General Purpose Pictures) and The W Network have been developing a concept and now it is time to cast for the pilot. If all goes well, then a series may come out of it. In any case, they are looking for people who want to be on the show and they asked me to post the casting notice in case any readers want a chance to earn...