Guarding Wealth: Are bonds the best bet for you?

Guarding Wealth: Are bonds the best bet for you?

Four secrets to buying bonds for your portfolio

Stocks flourish on good company news, a bit of inflation to push up prices, moderate growth in corporate earnings, and the optimism of investors looking forward to rising incomes and climbing profits. Bonds, on the other hand, are for pessimists. As economic growth slows, the demand for loans declines. Inflation subsides. In this atmosphere, bonds […] Read more

stock quote chart

Learn to read the market signs

Guarding Wealth: Two distinct schools of stock market price prediction are taken on faith

It is said that the future is written in the past. For investors, that means looking backward to see where the future lies. On the one hand, it seems silly. After all, if you are driving down the road, looking backward is downright hazardous. But if you are an investor, you have to look to […] Read more


Higher interest, rising bond prices

U.S. interest rates are heading up, and bond prices are rising. Here's why security pays

The ominous Chinese greeting, “may you live in interesting times,” has arrived in Canada. We face declining energy prices that are dragging down the entire economy to nearly zero growth. Canadian stocks are accordingly dismal. Our partner to the south, the U.S., has a soaring currency that will inhibit its exports. As a result, the […] Read more

Investing for tough times ahead

Investing for tough times ahead

Guarding Wealth: When you have to change your strategy from “making money” to “not losing money”

We are coming to the end of the longest bond bull market in history, a 32-year trend of falling interest rates and rising bond returns. Marked by a final decade of global stagnation and, recently, inflation rates virtually at the doorstep of deflation, the next step is expected to be a small rise in short […] Read more


The inevitable rise in interest rates

Guarding Wealth: Interest rates are going to have to rise sooner than later. The trick will be in the timing

It is inevitable that interest rates will rise, but when that will happen, nobody knows. On Sept. 17, the U.S. Federal reserve announced that, yet again, the inevitable increase would be postponed, perhaps to December, perhaps beyond. Until then, the Fed will keep interest rates at the emergency level that has prevailed for half a […] Read more

Low interest rates: opportunity and peril

Low interest rates: opportunity and peril

Low interest rates are tempting, but in the long run, debt always comes with a risk

Almost every Canadian farm family has four financial goals: buy a home, pay off farm and home debt, educate the kids and build up retirement savings. Satisfying all is a problem of balancing each. Very low interest rates for the last five years have made it easier to pay off debts and buy a home, […] Read more


Making the best of inflation

Government taxes what it creates. Here are some strategies for making the best of it

Making capital gains is the essence of investing. Yet many gains are nothing of the sort. They are only the illusory repricing of goods and incomes. Government drives inflation, then taxes stocks and bonds, incomes, house prices and even farms that are part of the repricing. If you think that this is unjust, you’re right. […] Read more

bonds

Why should you invest in bonds?

Bonds no longer offer interest above dividend rates, 
but they are an insurance policy for market mayhem

Readers often ask why and how one should buy bonds. The reason used to be to get interest at a rate above what stocks pay as dividends. That does not work anymore, for bank stocks and big telecoms, for example, pay four to five per cent. Ten-year Government of Canada bonds pay 2.5 per cent. […] Read more


paperwork on a desk

Protect your off-farm investments

The bull market we’ve been living with could be nearing its end. 
Keep your capital intact through the downturn

It is a principle of finance that people will pay almost anything for what they don’t know. Stocks with dubious futures can soar in price when investors, fearful of being left out, jump on the bandwagon. Voices of caution are few and far between. Yet now they are being heard. In New York, where you […] Read more

Farm financial planning: Trusts can increase family trust

Trust avoids family infighting for retiring Manitoba couple aiming to keep 
their land in the family, but also keep their kids still talking to each other

In south central Manitoba a couple we’ll call Harry and Ella, both 64, face the challenge of transferring their 3,500 acre mixed grain and 400 cow operation to their three children. The problem is that two of the children, each in the 30s, don’t want to farm. It’s a good business worth about $4 million. […] Read more