Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Photo: TSMC.com

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.



Despite my call for an official recession in Canada, I do think our stocks will perform better, with a gain of perhaps 10 per cent.

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


The average of the big bank projections was for the S&P 500 to gain 1.9 per cent, but as of late November the S&P 500 was up 25.5 per cent.

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

us politicians photo illustration

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


Governments have only a limited amount of sway over markets at large but can influence investor sentiment on different sectors, such as health care or alternative energy.

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

Not long ago people carried Nokias, Motorolas and BlackBerrys. Ten years from now, will we still all have iPhones?

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