Smart Money Blog

Something interesting is happening right now. We have lost some accounts. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t ever lost an account before; sometimes people move away, sometimes they want to go in a different direction, sometimes one of us figures out that we are not really the best fit. But lately we have lost…

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I can’t tell you when the next bear market will happen, but I can tell you for sure that we will have one. And we might even have one sooner rather than later. Going back to 1956, the average length of bull markets in Canada is 49 months, and the average gain during those bull…

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About a year ago I started to get serious about my health. As a younger man I used to be exceptionally fit, and I could get away with all sorts of things. I could eat junk food all day and drink beer all night. But I was also working out like a madman, with the…

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Recently I was one of the first people on the scene of a fatal motor vehicle accident. I was the one who called it in to 911 so I remained on the scene waiting for the first responders to arrive, but there was nothing that could be done. It was clear that the driver had…

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It bewilders me why people have a fascination with matters of little consequence, simply because they are easy to measure. What is it with this obsession with comparing investments to benchmarks? It’s misplaced at best, not to mention potentially playing a dangerous game. The first point, which is no small matter, is that an investor…

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I used to mail quarterly investment reviews to clients, but I stopped doing that. There were a number of reasons for making the decision to stop mailing quarterly investment reviews. I’ll be honest, it was a considerable expense and time commitment, that was a small part of the decision. And we weren’t really providing that…

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Given that the energy sector is the lifeblood of Fort St John, the declining prices for oil and gas are on the minds of a lot of people. I can’t tell you where the price of oil and gas is going – nobody else can either, by the way – but I wanted to share…

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I do quite a bit of travelling, and while it can be a grind, I think it is enormously beneficial to have face to face contact. Let me tell you what I mean. A couple years ago I took in a Manulife mutual funds due diligence conference in New York. Part of the reason that…

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Smart Money By Brad Brain, CFP, R.F.P., CLU, CH.F.C., FCSI Don’t believe everything you see on the internet I have had a few people ask me what I thought about Warren Buffett profiteering from the obstruction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This stems from an internet hoax that went viral which claims that the Buffett…

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