A Peek Into the Future
By Tom Bradley The wealth management industry is heading into a period of involuntary, but positive change. Dealers are being forced by the regulators to improve their reporting and show clients how...
View ArticleGovernments - High Leverage, Low Margins
By Tom Bradley While the Republicans and Democrats are duking it out in Washington over the debt ceiling, it’s ironic that the Congressional Budget Office is unable to report the fiscal year-end budget...
View ArticleStealth Economic Trends
By Tom Bradley A lot of the writing Scott and I do is aimed at breaking down common perceptions about economics and investing that are out of date or inaccurate. On that note, my friend Bing Monahan...
View ArticleBlackRock: Creating a Better Mutual Fund?
By Scott Ronalds The world’s largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is launching its first mutual funds in Canada. BlackRock (the parent of iShares) announced this month a suite of seven...
View ArticleAsleep at the Switch
By Tom Bradley I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed that I was on the board of JP Morgan. It was no fun. For those of you who aren’t familiar, JPM is a huge multinational bank. For decades, it was...
View ArticleDelaying the Inevitable
By Tom Bradley “In the 1960s and 1970s, mid-western American states fell victim to scores of wildfires. Constant interventions by the US Forest Service appeared to have little positive impact – if...
View ArticleThe ETF Price Disadvantage
By Tom Bradley Over the last year or so, there’s been a growing trend towards combining indexing with paid advice. It’s coming up more in the media, and is a common solution in the financial advice...
View ArticleShake up the Investment Industry
Special to the Financial Post Published November 20, 2013 By Tom Bradley By 2016, mutual fund firms and investment dealers will be required to tell their clients what they’re paying and how they’re...
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Throwing Darts
By Tom Bradley There was a telling chart in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. It showed the market predictions of Wall Street strategists for each year going back to 2000 (see below). The chart...
View ArticleCanadian Housing: Driven by the Mortgage Calculator
By Tom Bradley In this space, we talk often about how sensitive the housing market is to interest rates. In Tara Perkins’ article on real estate in the Report on Business the other week, there was a...
View ArticleThose Poor Goliaths
By Tom Bradley With the release of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, David and Goliath, there’s been lots of talk about big versus small. In the Money Managers edition of Benefits and Pensions Monitor, Jeff...
View ArticleAn Introduction to Dollar-weighted Returns
By Neil Jensen The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) has recently mandated that performance reporting on client statements use dollar-weighted returns, to be implemented by 2016. Most firms,...
View ArticleWhat 'They' Say
By Tom Bradley We hear it all the time in conversation with our partners and friends: “They say the market is going higher … they say Regina house prices are going down next year … or they say the...
View ArticleIn Defense of Mr. Gross
By Tom Bradley Bill Gross doesn’t need my help. The PIMCO Founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer is the undisputed bond king. He oversees a $2 trillion company and has been right many more times than...
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Biggest Economic Win in 2013
By Tom Bradley If 2013 was a great year for the markets, it was a stupendous year for pensions. Aon Hewitt published a report last week that shows the progress pension funds made in 2013 in resolving...
View ArticleClink Clink Clunk
By Tom Bradley The Canadian economy is a real conundrum to me. Clink - Real estate sales have returned to previously robust levels and prices have recovered nicely from the lull in 2012 (if you can...
View ArticleAnother Rain Cheque for Mr. Dimon
By Tom Bradley JP Morgan Chase reported its earnings yesterday. The company had a good quarter (US$5.3 billion), although it was down a little from last year due to charges related to legal and...
View ArticlePushing the Reset Button
By Tom Bradley Don Tapscott, the highly-regarded business thinker and writer wrote an article for Monday’s Report on Business (Note: David is taking me to hear him speak at University of Toronto next...
View ArticleBiggest Economic Win in 2013 - Part II
By Tom Bradley The improvement in the financial position of our defined benefit pension plans was the biggest economic highlight of last year. As we pointed out in a post two weeks ago, the change has...
View ArticleETF Sales - A Healthy Discussion
By Tom Bradley I’ve been remiss in doing a follow-up to an article I wrote for the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago (clients come first). In it I made the point that ETF sales in Canada have been...
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