Articles

Question 1:  How did the portfolios that you manage perform in 2020? One advantage that I have over other advisors is that I manage two mutual funds, Willoughby and Northgate. Many clients hold positions in these funds and if not, the process I use for managing individual portfolios is very similar.  As client portfolios have many  Read more ➝

Question 1:  The end of the year is a time at which I like to look at my portfolio to see how it performed.  I know there are many ways to do this.  What do you suggest?  To begin, you are definitely on the right track in your thinking that the end of the year  Read more ➝

Question 1:  Now that there is a new President Elect in the US, how is this going to affect financial markets? Once again, this is a question asking me to predict the future.  Monday, November 9th was the first trading day following Biden being elected the 46th President of the United States and we saw some huge  Read more ➝

Question 1:  I hear people say that the main reason that stocks go up and down is emotion.  Is that correct? Unfortunately, most people don’t really understand how stocks work and if you asked the question “How do stocks work?”, you will generally get a response that stock prices are driven by emotion or that  Read more ➝

Question 1:  There is a Presidential election in a couple of weeks.  How is this going to affect my investments? This type of question fits into the predictions category and I will answer it as I usually answer predictions questions.  Making predictions for the short-term is not much more than guessing.  Who knew that last  Read more ➝

Question 1: September seems to be off to a rocky start.  Is this the beginning of a much larger decline? According to Investopedia “Since 1950, the month of September has seen an average decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) of 0.8%, while the S&P 500 has averaged a 0.5% decline during September. Since  Read more ➝

Question 1: We’ve had quite a run as stocks have recovered from COVID-19.  I’m worried that stocks are expensive now.  What are your thoughts? If you had polled one thousand financial professionals on March 23, 2020, and asked them what the odds were that there would have been a July spike in new COVID 19  Read more ➝

Question 1: I am approaching retirement and am wondering if I should be making changes to my portfolio to reflect my change in circumstances? It is always a great idea to do a complete analysis of your portfolio when you experience a major life change.  Planning is a three-step process.  1.  Where are you now?   Read more ➝

Question 1:  Many Canadians are complaining about the performance of their portfolios.  They say they haven’t had good returns for a number of years now.  What is the main problem that they are experiencing? I have examined a lot of portfolios presented to me when people approach me for a second opinion and there seems  Read more ➝