+ After years at the bottom of the list, Canadian investors are now only paying below average fees. Progress! ....Canadian investors get a ‘Below Average’ fee experience [Morningstar]
+ Value has been trailing growth for a long time now. We can look at this result and conclude that value is dead, or we can conclude that now is the best time in history to invest in value stocks. This article makes a compelling case for the latter. .....The Unprecedented Opportunity in Value Stocks [Advisor Perspectives]
+ In another piece addressing the Michael Burry commentary on index funds, Ben Carlson wrote an excellent piece explaining why an index fund bubble simply does not make sense. We agree with his points and hope that between our video and this article, any concerns about this issue will be alleviated. ...Debunking the Silly “Passive is a Bubble” Myth [A Wealth of Common Sense]
In Episode 62 we addressed the much-discussed (but overblown) comments from Michael Burry, the fund manager sensationalized in the Big Short. Spoiler: index funds are not creating a bubble. We also addressed this in more detail in a video, The Index Fund Bubble. We also talked about the role of gold in portfolios. Our gold comments attracted some interesting comments from listeners - this is clearly a polarizing discussion. For anyone interested in some technical conversation, we dissected tax loss selling and explained why its practical use case might be more limited than most people think.
We were joined by Tim Nash (Episode 63), author of the Sustainable Economist blog and founder of Good Investing, for a discussion on sustainable investing. Tim had some interesting arguments on how choosing sustainable investments can increase the cost of capital for the "bad companies" which may affect their behavior. He also argued that changing your portfolio can have a much bigger environmental impact than changing your own behavior. For example, if you have a green portfolio but drive an SUV, you're still net positive. The concept is that because so much of the environmental impact comes from corporations vs. individuals, not owning bad corporations can dramatically reduce your individual carbon footprint. Tim's commentary is definitely interesting, but it is not uncontroversial. We had some great comments on the rationalreminder.ca post challenging some of Tim's thinking.
Episode 64 was something that we had been talking doing about for a long time. We had our usual discussion on some timely issues, including revisiting Michael Burry, dividend investing, and negative interest rates, but we added on a special segment at the end. We explained factors to Ben's mom, Andrea Felix. The feedback from this episode has been great, so maybe the concept worked out.
We were joined by Dr. Wendall Mascarenhas (Episode 65). Wendall is an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Resident at McGill. He has been through more formal education than most people will ever go through, and he is used to applying evidence to decision-making. On its own, this would not make Wendall an interesting guest on a podcast about personal finance and investing. What makes Wendall unique is that he also has a keen interest in personal finance and has been a long-time listener of the podcast. He wanted to come on to discuss his observations of how the medical community and the investing community apply evidence differently.
+ The Irrelevance of Dividends
Most of the arguments from dividend lovers end up being focused on the ability to select individual stocks, which is not something that most people can do consistently.
+ The Index Fund Bubble
A lot of people are worried about how index funds might affect the integrity of the stock market.
We hope that you found our newsletter useful and informative.
Cameron & Ben