Canadians hold more than a trillion dollars in mutual funds: IFIC + MORE Nov 19th

OTTAWA – Canada’s mega-rich lost ground to the other 99 per cent, say newly released figures from Statistics Canada.
The top one per cent of Canadian earners saw their share of the country’s overall income tumble to a six-year low in 2012, the agency said in a report Tuesday.
The wealthiest Canadians, the data show, held 10.3 per cent of total earnings, a drop from a peak of 12.1 per cent in 2006.
To qualify for the exclusive club, the report said an individual had to earn a minimum of $215,700 in 2012, a feat achieved by 261,365 people who filed taxes that year.
Women represented 21.3 per cent of the ranks of Canada’s super-wealthy in 2012 — nearly double their proportion of 11.4 per cent in 1982.
“Although Canadian men represent the vast majority of the top income groups, the number and share of women in (the) top one per cent reached a 31-year high in 2012,” said the Statistics Canada report, which also elaborated on how much the gap narrowed overall…

According to data from Real Capital Analytics, Canadians have been the single largest buyer of U.S.-based commercial real estate since 2010

LOS GATOS, Calif. – Netflix says it plans to expand into Australia and New Zealand in March.
The online movie and television provider said Tuesday that details on pricing will be available later.
The Los Gatos, California-based company has about 53 million subscribers in the U.S. and internationally. It grew to Canada in 2010, expanded to Latin America in 2011 and in 2012 began rollouts in European countries.
In the most recent quarter, subscriber growth fell short of company forecasts because of a price increase in the U.S., and Netflix is dealing with tougher competition from Amazon and Hulu. HBO is also planning an Internet package in the U.S. next year.
Shares of Netflix Inc. fell 11 cents to close at $381.03 Tuesday. The stock is up 3.5 per cent this year.
The post Netflix plans to expand into Australia and New Zealand in March appeared first on Canadian Business.

TORONTO – Canadian mutual funds investors continued to favour balanced funds in October, according to the Investment Funds Institute of Canada.
IFIC says the industry’s overall net sales last month totalled $2.55 billion, up from $1.7 billion in October 2013.
Net sales of balanced funds, which hold a variety of assets, were $2.27 billion, up from $2.095 billion a year ago.
Bond fund net sales in October were $363.5 million compared with net redemptions of $1.5 billion in the same month a year ago.
Equity fund net redemptions in October were lower at $229.2 million versus net sales of $1.202 billion year over year.
Mutual fund assets under management in October totalled $1.123 trillion, up 15.6 per cent from a year ago.
The post Canadians hold more than a trillion dollars in mutual funds: IFIC appeared first on Canadian Business.

SAN FRANCISCO – Financial planning often involves lots of spreadsheets, pie charts and eyes glazing over.
Fidelity Investments aims to change that equation with an experiment in 3-D technology designed to make money management seem more like a mesmerizing video game than mundane number crunching. Welcome to “StockCity,” a virtual-reality landscape dotted with skyscrapers representing the stocks in a person’s investment portfolio. A Web version is being released Wednesday at http://www.fidelitylabs.com , but StockCity ultimately is meant to be viewed on the Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headset that still hasn’t been released on the mass market.
StockCity’s architecture changes with the fluctuations on Wall Street. The heights of the buildings are determined by the prices of the stocks in an investment portfolio, while the widths are based on the number of outstanding shares. When the market is open, it’s daytime in StockCity, and night falls when the market closes…