British Airways’ computer meltdown a symptom of wealth divide in air travel + MORE Jun 3rd

Wall Street shrugs off jobs report to hit records; slumping oil price keeps TSX down

After the airline’s recent IT problems, one thing’s for sure: The market is being defined by bifurcation

(iStock)
This week the Ontario government introduced plans for truly sweeping labour reforms. Perhaps none is more important—and controversial—than the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by Jan. 2, 2019.
There’s an argument to be made that going so far so fast could kill the goose that lays the golden egg, destroying jobs at a time when more are desperately needed, particularly for the young.  The counterargument is that this would add another gold-egg-laying goose to the mix, and spur the demand that creates jobs in the first place.
Unsqueeze the driver of growth
Domestic consumption drives the economy, in Canada and around the world.
Household purchases account for 57 per cent of Canadian GDP, a rising share of economic activity since the Great Recession of 2008 because business-to-business purchases, business investment and exports haven’t found their mojo since.
Housing costs have been rising in the biggest cities where most of the population lives. That is eating up even more disposable income, constraining how much of the monthly budget is left to make purchases from domestic and international producers…

It might be said that for many years the pre-eminent way of looking at investing was through security selection and market timing. These are the primary tenets of active management as practiced currently.
Many of these ideas were first spelled out by the great Benjamin Graham in his books Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, both written before 1950. More than half a century ago, a man from Princeton named John Bogle created what many now view as the world’s first index fund. Instead of doing things the way that Mr. Graham advocated, Mr. Bogle put forward the idea that cost was a major drag on investment performance. Some years (and more than a few slammed doors) later, Bogle founded a mutual fund company called Vanguard. You may have heard of it.
Despite considerable backlash—including allegations that Bogle was “un-American”—Vanguard is now one of the largest money managers on the planet and is taking in net new assets to the tune of about a billion dollars a day…

Q I have opened accounts with a discount brokerage and built a portfolio with the following ETFs:

Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap Index (VCN)
Vanguard U.S. Total Market Index ETF (VUN)
iShares Core MSCI EAFE IMI Index ETF (XEF)
iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets IMI Index ETF (XEC)
BMO Aggregate Bond Index ETF (ZAG)

Are these ETFs enough for my RRSP and TFSA, or should I add others, like a dividend-producing funds and real estate investment trusts (REITs)?
– Natalie
A Carl Richards, a financial planner and author of The Behavior Gap, has observed an odd human tendency. “People say they want things to be simpler—investing, life insurance, retirement planning, etc.,” he writes. “But when a simpler (and effective) option is proposed, they reject it as too simple.”
The Couch Potato portfolio is a shining example. The appearance of ETFs has made building a diversified portfolio easy and shockingly cheap, yet many investors seem bent on making it more complicated and more expensive…