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





Guarding Wealth: Investments for long-term growth

Guarding Wealth: Investments for long-term growth

The global slowdown is serious and widespread. Risk aversion is the new investment trend

Stock markets around the world have been tumbling almost in unison. The customary instruction from financial planners — stay invested and wait for the inevitable recovery — is tough to accept when, every day seemingly without let up, stock averages lose several per cent. The heartache will stop and the tumble from grace will end […] 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

Keep your eyes on the dollar

Keep your eyes on the dollar

Prairie farmers should care about the current state of world currencies in the world market

The past two years have seen some major political and economic shifts around the world. The Russia/Ukraine standoff in the Crimean region resulted in economic embargoes and sanctions against Russia. This threw a major kink into trade in that region, causing serious economic hardships. It caused internal inflationary pressures to build, devaluing the Russian ruble […] Read more


financial market chart

Investing in financial markets

In Part 1 of this new series on financial management basis, Andrew Allentuck explains how to choose a manager for your money

Warren Buffett, the tycoon from Omaha who became America’s second richest billionaire after Bill Gates, quipped that investing is simple but not necessarily easy. The simplicity is understanding relatively few things very, very well. The job entails both researching each business he buys and having the guts to stick to rules he traces back to Ben […] 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