Former real estate mogul Robert Campeau dead at 93 + MORE Jun 19th

Austen Finlay
AGE: 28
PLACE: Thunder Bay, Ont.
TFSA TOTAL: $64,482
STRATEGY: A mix of value stocks and dividend payers

Me and my TFSA
Austen Finlay is a 28-year-old pharmacist in North Bay, Ont. and has been investing in his TFSA since 2010. He was a young university student at the University of Waterloo and says he was attracted to the fact he could tax shelter his capital gains. “At first I used it just as a savings account,” says Austin. “But then in my third year, I started to learn more about exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other investments.”
Sign up for our free investing newsletter »
In the beginning, Austen’s investments mirrored the Couch Potato portfolio. But the more he read, the more he became attracted to stock picking and value-based investing. “I still look for value stock opportunities today,” says Austen, who faithfully reads MoneySense’s Top 200 stocks.
He also likes a good dividend-paying stock. “I’ve read books by Derek Foster and I like his premise that you can buy dividend-paying stocks that give off a decent dividend and simply hold them forever…

Do you know how financial advisors get paid? Most investors can’t answer this question or if they can, then there is a good chance they don’t really know how much they are paying. That’s especially true for investors who hold mutual funds due to embedded commissions.
It’s a thorny issue that’s continues to be argued, but the Canadian Securities Association is taking steps to end this debate for good. In January the CSA put out a call for input on a consultation paper that explores discontinuing embedded commissions. Specifically the CSA asked for input on whether killing off embedded commissions would impede investor access to financial advice.
Sign up for our free investing newsletter »
If you really want to understand the issue and why you hope the CSA finally eliminates these commissions then you have to read the submission by John DeGoey on this issue. DeGoey, a portfolio manager with iA Securities (iAS) in Toronto who is a frequent contributor to MoneySense and a regular critic of embedded commissions…

Robert Campeau, the former real estate mogul who once controlled the Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s department store chains in the United States, has died at 93.

The value of diversification in investing is well documented. Nobel Laureate Harry Markowitz stressed its importance when he introduced his Modern Portfolio Theory in 1952. At the risk of oversimplifying his theory, diversification works because assets are not perfectly correlated, which ultimately smooths out investor returns. It’s been the bedrock of sensible financial plans ever since. But does it still work?
No one is suggesting Markowitz’s theory is wrong, but there is a debate about whether it is still as effective, at least from a geographical diversification perspective. Without question, global markets have changed dramatically since 1952. “It just doesn’t work anymore,” says Rod Jones, managing director with Stoxx Ltd. The typical indices that most people use don’t do what people want them to do, he says.
Consider what global markets looked like 65 years ago. Multinational firms were rarer and markets in different countries largely acted independently from each other…