Specialty, discount retail earnings set to echo wider sector’s woes + MORE May 15th

Q I’ve had a Couch Potato portfolio with four ETFs for a number of years. Between myself and my spouse we have six accounts: a TFSA and an RRSP each, plus a spousal RRSP and a Locked-In Retirement Account (LIRA) from a former employer. When rebalancing, is it wise to treat each account separately, or should I consider them parts of a single portfolio?
—Kees, Calgary
A The Couch Potato strategy can be very simple when you’re managing just one or two accounts. But as you’ve learned, Kees, juggling a half-dozen can be much trickier.
It’s usually best to think of all household accounts as a single portfolio, as long as they all have the same goal. Chances are you and your spouse plan to use your TFSAs and RRSPs (including the spousal and the LIRA) to fund your retirement, so all of your registered savings have the same long-term objective. It would be different if, for example, you were earmarking your TFSA savings for a downpayment, or if you also had an RESP to pay for a child’s education…

Successful stock pickers are a rarefied breed. They’re idolized and celebrated. But how do you spot them? Or more importantly, what traits can you emulate to become a better stock picker yourself?
Here’s a clue: when it comes to investing, they don’t mind losing the battles, confident they will win the war. And when they do, the results can be amazing.
Recently, I was lucky enough to hear a talk by value investment manager and author Michael van Biema at the Toronto Value Investment Conference. His book, Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World’s Greatest Value Investors goes into great detail on how the strategies of some of the most successful investment legends have achieved phenomenal double-digit average annual returns over the long run. I highly recommend to any active stock pickers eager to learn from the greats.
At the start of the book van Biema, the founder and chief investment officer of van Biema Value Partners, a value-focused fund of hedge funds based in New York City, reveals how a light went off when he realized that the investors he admired most shared one characteristic: they were concentrated value investors…

Retiring at age 50 can be a tall order as you are financing a retirement lifestyle that could be 40+ years long. Heather and Dereck hope to accomplish this in just 9 years. Is their savings plan enough?
The current situation
Heather and Dereck Irwin are both 41 and live in Woodstock, Ont. Heather is a project coordinator working with kids with special needs earnings $50,000 annually, while Dereck is an electrician earning $120,000 a year. Not only does this couple have stressful jobs, Dereck’s job requires a lot of shift work, which makes spending time together difficult. The Irwins, who don’t have any kids, are true do-it-yourselfers. “We cook everything ourselves, I fix our vehicles myself and we do all the renovations and maintenance on our home,” says Dereck. “We just like it that way.”
Right now, the couple has a home valued at $350,000 with a $225,000 mortgage on it. They also have RRSPs and TFSAs that total $468,000 plus they will receive pension benefits. Their goal is to retire at age 50 with $60,000 gross per year in income from their portfolio, taking into account 2% inflation annually…

Despite broader economic growth, brick-and-mortar sales continue to slump

This week my son Luca, 22, was doing some investing research for the small sum he has in his Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) and came across an online stock contest called Horizons ETFs Biggest Winner Trading Competition. He immediately signed up, happy to learn about investing while perhaps winning some prize money in the process.
Actually, this is one of two stock picking contests that Luca entered this week. The second is the Kitco/Stockpools Stockpicking Challenge.
Horizon’s contest
The games themselves are fairly simple. For the Horizons ETF game you are given $100,000 of “fantasy funds” to start trading your virtual trading account. There are a few key rules: You can only trade ETFs listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange; you must hold four ETFs and you can only invest up to 25% of your portfolio in any one ETF. But make no mistake—there are several volatile sector funds available on their pre-chosen list as well as hedged ETFs that can add a lot of volatility and upside to your final tally…