Herman VanGenderen looks back into the various mistakes and successes in his portfolio, with the goal of helping readers out there actively managing their own off-farm investments.
Tag Archives equity markets
Smashes and setbacks line the path to a successful investment portfolio
Investing for Fun and Profit: The personal portfolio quadrupled in the equivalent of eight years, despite numerous mistakes
What factors historically boost stock returns?
Investing for Fun and Profit: Valuation, momentum and profitability historically drive returns
Drivers of stock values can be summed up in four positive terms - valuation, momentum, quality and profitability - and four negative: growth in assets, turnover, company size and share price volatility, Herman VanGenderen explains.
Limiting Canadian exposure, I am not alone
Investing for Fun and Profit: The flight of capital from the Canadian economy continues
Canada’s government may still be in its honeymoon with voters, but not with investors, Herman VanGenderen writes, citing reports that foreign investors are divesting Canadian assets while Canadians are boosting exposure in foreign securities.
The Titanium Strength Portfolio keeps plugging along
Investing for Fun and Profit: The portfolio achieved a nice double by its seventh anniversary
If, seven years ago, you had told me all the extenuating circumstances to come, I might have been hesitant predicting what I did at the time about this model stock portfolio.
A spectacular 2024 defied predictions, again
Investing for Fun and Profit: Also, my amateur investor market outlook for 2025
The stock market was a happy place in 2024, with the U.S. S&P 500 delivering a 25 per cent total return, including dividends. Even the laggardly Canadian TSX joined the party with a total return of 21.6 per cent. How did my 2024 predictions turn out compared to the pros, and what do I see […] Read more
Analysts’ target prices again miss the mark
Investing for Fun and Profit: I plan to continue to ignore those target prices when making decisions
Approximately a year ago a column titled “The value of target prices” studied analyst price targets on every TSX index stock with how the stock actually performed over the next year. Analyst target prices had been conveniently amalgamated in a Globe and Mail article. While I had never used target prices to make purchase or […] Read more
The cycles within economic cycles
Investing for Fun and Profit: The economic cycle, presidential cycle and stock market cycle are separate entities that interact
The S&P 500 — the market I’ll be referencing throughout this article — has been on a tear the past couple of years, leading many to wonder if the hot bull market can continue. It was up 26.3 per cent in 2023 and at time of writing is up about 23 per cent year-to-date. Let’s […] Read more
Is it best, when investing, to stay politically agnostic?
Investing for Fun and Profit: Besides, how much influence do governments really have on the markets?
I began this column the day after the great Harris/Trump debate. Based on the publishing schedule, you might be reading it just before the U.S. election. A lot can happen in both politics and the markets over a six-week period, but I thought it would be an appropriate time to review how politics may or […] Read more
A brief history of market dominance
Investing for Fun and Profit: Is the publicly traded past a guide for the future?
The largest 10 U.S. companies by market capitalization (number of shares, multiplied by price per share) currently represent about 30 per cent of the value of the entire U.S. publicly traded universe, and the U.S represents about 60 of the world market cap. Therefore these 10 companies represent about 18 per cent of the entire […] Read more
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
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
