Remodelled Couch Potato portfolios for 2014 + MORE Jan 6th

TORONTO – An Ontario woman who operated two companies linked to a massive penny stock fraud scheme was a knowing participant, the province’s top securities regulator has ruled.
The Ontario Securities Commission says Andrea McCarthy, who acted as a director and officer for BFM Industries Inc. and Liquid Gold International Inc. “illegally distributed” securities and trades without registering with the body.
A sanctions hearing has been scheduled for March 12.
It’s alleged that from November 2008 to December 2010, McCarthy’s companies defrauded 32 foreign investors by selling them $445,000 of worthless stock.
The commission says it was McCarthy’s responsibility to handle the day-to-day operations at the two companies, including communicating with investors and withdrawing money from corporate accounts.
Last week, Sandy Winick, described in OSC documents as McCarthy’s lover, and his business partner, Gregory Curry, were permanently banned by the OSC from securities trading and ordered to pay more than $1 million in penalties for breaking securities law…

I’ve been at pains to discourage investors from tinkering with their portfolios every time a new fund comes along, but 2013 did see the launch of some significant ETFs. In a couple of other cases, it was just time to replace the incumbents with less expensive choices. You can visit the Model Portfolios page for full details, but here’s a summary of the changes:
Global Couch Potato

I’ve added the ING Direct Streetwise Balanced Portfolio as a simple option for the Global Couch Potato. While using individual index mutual funds allows for lower costs (especially if you use the TD e-Series option) and more flexibility, the Streetwise Portfolios are ideal for investors who have small portfolios in registered accounts.

The ETF version of this portfolio (now Option 4) has been overhauled completely. I’ve replaced the Canadian  equity and bond funds with cheaper alternatives from Vanguard. And in place of the iShares MSCI World (XWD), I’ve suggested the Vanguard US Total Market (VUN) and the iShares MSCI EAFE IMI (XEF)…

The start of a new year is always a very interesting time for me for so many reasons. I’ll stick to blogging & investing for today:) As most of you know, I do reset my long & short tech stock trades every year. I also tend to make various predictions in January but before getting into that, it’s important to take a look back to see how I did last year. If not, what’s the point right? One of the biggest and most time consuming set of predictions I do is the annual power rankings where I rank the list of stocks that I follow. I had done extremely well in my 2012 rankings but last year was not as good:) You win some (tech stock trades, speculative picks, USDP, etc) and lose some others right?
You can see my 2013 predictions post here:
IntelligentSpeculator’s 2013 Tech Stock Power Rankings
As you can expect, I plan on publishing my 2014 power rankings later this week:)
Biggest Miss I Should Have Seen: Netflix (NFLX) – Now that I think about it, it seems fairly obvious…

This GIC rate is offered by Oaken Financial and was updated on 2013-02-04. Click on the link above to get more details or apply online.

Morgan Stanley adds to list of lowered recommendations on the stock