Jim Stark | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Guest Article: DSC Index Funds

Posted by Jim Stark on Feb 8, 2010 | 2 comments

This is a another guest article by Jim Stark. Jim Stark is a pseudonym for a practicing Canadian financial advisor. Why are there no DSC Index Funds? On one hand, pretty much any advisor knows that there is no such thing as a DSC index fund and why that is so. On the other hand, many retail investors probably never thought about it- and likely wouldn’t be able to accurately explain why this little wrinkle exists even if they did. There’s likely a pretty severe disconnect on this- a topic that could have applications in the fields of practice management, ethics, client suitability and advisor ‘value propositions’ to name a few. (Note: there actually are DSC...

Research or Marketing Gimmick?

Posted by Jim Stark on Feb 2, 2010 | 2 comments

This is a another guest article by Jim Stark. Jim Stark is a pseudonym for a practicing Canadian financial advisor. So I hopped on to my computer one morning and typed in the phrase “scientific method” into my search engine to see what came up. Click here for the definition that our friends at Wikipedia use. Then read the following: As far as I can tell, the preponderance of evidence supports the notion that the majority of active products and strategies fail to outperform and that the ones that do cannot be reliably identified in advance. It’s sort of like lottery tickets. The majority of tickets sold are losing tickets and the ones that are actually winners...

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...

Is Warren Buffett Managing Your Money?

Posted by Jim Stark on Aug 12, 2009 | 8 comments

This is a 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… The thing about the ongoing ‘debate’ between active (markets are largely inefficient) and passive (markets are largely efficient) management is that no side has been able to score an incontrovertible ‘knock-out punch’. By the way, I use the term ‘debate’ loosely, as I’m unsure if you can call it that, given that few people in the active management camp seem willing to truly engage the logic and...