outdoor lighting

How we choose highly profitable companies at reasonable valuations

Investing for Fun & Profit: It's both an art and a science -- but mostly science

In previous articles I’ve frequently mentioned the importance of selecting highly profitable companies at reasonable valuations. I’d like to illustrate with a real-life example of a switch I made in our tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs) at the start of the year. Our TFSA performance has lagged recently even though since inception they are still running […] Read more

guy looking skyward holding sign proclaiming end times

Markets are dispassionate to our human disasters

Investing for Fun and Profit: While headlines may exalt a unique situation, to markets it's 'same as it ever was'

The first public stock exchange opened in Amsterdam in 1611, trading one company, the Dutch East India Company. Twenty-five years later, coincident with tulip mania, the company had a market cap of 78 million Dutch guilders, which translates to $9.7 trillion current U.S. dollars, putting Microsoft’s and Apple’s near-$3 trillion valuations into perspective. The London […] Read more


The stronger the consensus, the more wrong it usually becomes.

‘Everybody’ is usually wrong — and why it must be so

Overwhelming strength of sentiment, when few buyers or sellers remain, can bend a trend

Everybody is familiar with the colloquial term “Everybody is doing X.” By “X” we don’t mean “formerly Twitter” — everybody has been writing “X (formerly Twitter)” so I thought I would do the opposite. In this case you’re welcome to fill in whatever you wish for X. Salespeople often use the phrase to help sell […] Read more

Just two per cent of the total companies in the S&P 500 index now represent 32 per cent of the entire index by market value.

Economic and market outlook for 2024

If the U.S. avoids recession, Canada's will probably be shallow

It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” One of my favorite prediction quotes comes by way of the legendary baseball player, manager and philosopher, Yogi Berra. This quote, like many of his famous quips, incorporates a meaningful paradox. Following up on my previous column, the TSX ended 2023 with a total return — […] Read more


Oil inventories remain low, but recession fears leading to price declines continue to permeate the market.

How did 2023’s economic and market predictions turn out?

Predictions are often made but their accuracy never evaluated, yet this is an important step

For the past seven years in my newsletter, I have made annual “Fearless Predictions.” I also summarize predictions from the investment industry. The last chapter of my book, titled “If I claim to be a wise man…it surely means that I don’t know,” launched my annual prediction exercise, largely to poke fun at the process. […] Read more

exterior photo of the toronto stock exchange

The value of target prices

How accurate are analysts’ projections on stocks’ price movements?

One aspect of my character that has served me well over the years is a healthy sense of skepticism of what I hear or read. This “skill,” for lack of a better word, is becoming increasingly important in the information age, more accurately described as the misinformation age. I read a lot to know what […] Read more


Several reasons exist for the recent divergence between our two interconnected economies.

The tale of two economies

Strong energy prices would normally lead to a strong Canadian currency

U.S. third-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) grew at an annualized rate of 4.9 per cent. This followed second-quarter growth of 2.1 and first-quarter of 1.1 per cent. Rather than the widely predicted recession, the U.S has experienced accelerating growth. Canada, on the other hand, is flatlining, with first-quarter growth of 0.8 per cent, second-quarter at […] Read more




The global financial crisis — and volatile commodity prices that followed — has its roots in the relatively recent drive for early retirement

There has been much talk about the influence of investment funds on commodity prices and suggestions that these investments may need to be regulated. We argue here that investing in commodity markets is just one aspect of the broader retirement dilemma we are all faceing, and that regulation of investments in commodity markets may not […] Read more