Bonds

When clients join our Successful Investor Wealth Management service, they often ask us whether they should hold bonds or focus more heavily on stocks. This is a particularly important question for investors who rely on their portfolios for income.

It’s important to note that there is no single “best portfolio” for every investor. Higher potential for loss comes with higher potential …read more »

Annuities have a lot of rigid terms that can work for or against you.

The main benefit of annuities is that they offer stable, predictable income. That may make them suitable for part of your assets, depending on your age, investment experience, the time you want to devote to your investments, your desire to leave an estate to your heirs …read more »

When you join my Inner Circle service, you get my investing advice on your own personal investment questions, plus you get to see what other Inner Circle members have asked, along with our answers.

So you can get a sense of how our service works, and how our investing advice might help your portfolio, I’d like to share two recent …read more »

When you analyze a stock, it’s important to have an idea of how likely it is to survive a business slump and go on to prosper when economic growth resumes.

A number of factors can help you to do that. These include the interest rate on the company’s debt, how sensitive it is to economic cycles, its advantages and disadvantages …read more »

Investors are paying more attention to dividend yields (a company’s total annual dividends paid per share divided by the current stock price) as volatile stock markets continue to recover. Companies are responding by doing their best to maintain, or even increase, their dividend payments.

That’s good news for investors, because dividends are more dependable than capital gains as a source of …read more »

When you join my Inner Circle service, you get to ask me your own personal investment questions, plus you get to see what other Inner Circle members have asked, along with our answers.

So you can see how the service works, and get a sense of how you could benefit from it, I’d like to share a recent member question …read more »

Asset allocation funds are mutual funds whose managers feel they can enhance returns and/or cut risk by switching back and forth among stocks, bonds and cash equivalents.

For example, if the managers feel the bond market is poised for an upswing, they may overweight the portfolio in fixed-income investments for a few months to take advantage of the change.

Here are …read more »

If you need steady income and want to hold bond funds, we advise you to focus on those with short-term maturity dates (see below for more on bond funds). That’s because bonds with shorter terms face a lower risk from interest-rate increases. You should also avoid funds that take part in any kind of speculative trading.

This bond ETF offers …read more »

When you join my Inner Circle service, you get to ask me your own personal investment questions, plus you get to see what other Inner Circle members have asked, along with our answers. So you can see how the service works, and get a sense of how it might help your portfolio, I’d like to share just a couple of …read more »

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $56 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $78.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.1; SI Rating: Above Average) is Canada’s largest bank, with total assets of $659.9 billion.

In its third quarter, which ended July 31, 2009, Royal’s earnings rose 23.7%, to $1.6 billion, or $1.05 a share, from $1.3 billion, …read more »