Investment Information

Every day people are actively looking for ways to make money from home, or for a way to create a home based business so they can leave salary positions and be their own boss. 

It sounds easy, but finding a home based business on the Internet with real potential is nearly impossible.  The vast majority of home based 'opportunities' promoted on the Internet are really just scams.  Even if you think you have a great idea for a new business, do you have the experience and the time to market-test your product, open an office,  open credit card accounts and bank accounts? 

If you're like most people, you probably don't have a proven idea and you don't really want to risk wasting money on some get-rich-quick Internet scam.  Or if you think you do have a good business idea, you probably don't have the time, skills and money required to bring a new product to market profitably on your own. 

So what's the alternative?  It's so simple.

I've been investing for a long time.  I've worked as a professional advisor and branch manager for years.  I've consulted for and helped financial advisors and planners across North America develop winning investment strategies to help their clients make money.

I've looked at every benchmarking strategy to evaluate performance there is.  Some are too complex for the average investor, some I thought were too simplistic and some were completely unrealistic or unfair.

Just over 3 years ago I got an idea.  Why not use a giant in the investing world to see how my investments are really performing.  The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.  I was spending a great deal of time researching investments and global Geo political trends.  I decided: if I couldn't soundly beat Warren Buffett, why spend any time researching investments at all?  Why not invest all of my savings into Berkshire Hathaway shares and be done with it.

Anyone who knows anything about David Swensen's investment style will tell you David doesn't like mutual funds.  However he's also a realist; he knows the asset classes he invests the Yale Endowment and Investment Funds in are either not accessible, or not practical for the average investor.  So what can be learned from David's investment style?

Risk is a hard thing to quantify.  What's high risk for me might be low risk for you.  It all depends on your experience with investing, your personal comfort with loss and your investing time horizon.  So how do you know how much risk is right for you?

Passive or active management?  Is it best to buy lower MER index funds and ETFs (exchange traded funds) or is it worth paying the higher MER for active management decisions made by a professional fund manager supported by a team of analysts?  There's a lot of information out there supporting one side or the other, but I'm here to tell you; don't listen to any of it.  If you don't consider using both in your portfolio building, you're only hurting yourself.

How To Diversify A Mutual Fund Portfolio

Everyone has heard the saying 'don't put all your eggs in one basket'.  Portfolio diversification is based on this age-old rule.  It's also the easiest way to think about diversification.  What makes diversification particularly attractive is the the magical result of mixing two or more risky assets in a portfolio; the risk of the entire portfolio will always be less than the weighted average risk of the portfolio. 

Top misconceptions you need to know about before building a portfolio with mutual funds

I've compiled a short list of problem areas and misconceptions I have commonly run into when working with mutual fund investors.  Many of the items may seem obvious at first glance, but I've run into the same problems so many times over the years I think it's worth my time to quickly review some of them.