The unique ways women approach finance + MORE Oct 23rd

BEIJING, China – A Chinese newspaper made a rare front-page appeal for police to release one of its reporters after he was detained for writing reports alleging financial misdeeds at a large construction equipment company.
The New Express newspaper on Wednesday said there was no evidence the journalist, Chen Yongzhou, had committed any crime.
The paper says Chen was being punished for a series of reports he wrote that scrutinized the finances of Zoomlion, a construction company listed on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges.
Police in the Hunan provincial capital, Changsha, said on its official microblog that the journalist had been detained for alleged “damage to business reputation.”
Zoomlion is the second-largest construction equipment maker in China whose largest shareholder is the Hunan provincial government.
The post Chinese paper urges release of journalist who reported provincial company’s financial problems appeared first on Canadian Business.

CALGARY – The Fraser Institute says chronic deficits have helped slash the value of Alberta’s net financial assets by 65 per cent in six years.
A new study, called “Alberta’s Double-Dip Decline in Financial Assets, says that amounts to about $22.4 billion.
The study says the trend mimics the decline in Alberta’s net financial assets during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
That’s the last time the province ran chronic deficits.
Worse, the study says the decline was calculated only until the end of March 2013, so it doesn’t reflect the costs of relief for homeowners and businesses hit in the June floods.
The study says Alberta’s net financial assets declined to just $12.1 billion by 2012-13 from $34.5 billion in 2006-07.
“Provincial politicians, including in the present government, once bragged about Alberta’s net financial assets,” the study’s author, Mark Milke, said in a news release.
“No more, as the continual red ink budgets have led to a steep decline in Alberta’s wealth…

You may have reached retirement, but financial planning doesn’t stop once you stop working. Frugal living and wise financial foresight can help ensure a comfortable life, and these simple tips will help you maintain stability for decades.

A reader recently sent in this question on asset allocation:
I’m an investing newbie. Last year, I started investing in all four TD e-Series Mutual Funds in my TFSA on my own after reading your posts. I currently have a 30 percent allocation to bonds. Should I keep investing in TD Canadian Bond Index (e-Series) with interest rates forecasted to go up? Or should I cut down on the bond fund and allocate more into the other stock index funds?
Bonds have been terrific investments for a long time now. As of Sept. 30, 2013, Canadian bonds (as measured by the DEX Universe Bond Index) have returned 5.63 percent over 5 years and 5.22 percent over 10 years. Canadian stocks (as measured by the S&P/TSX 60 Index), on the other hand, had returned 3.72 percent and 8.45 percent respectively during the same time periods albeit at a much higher volatility including a significant stock market crash. Therefore, the natural inclination of many investors would have been to look at the recent past and concluded that they are better off in bonds than in stocks…

The standard cliché is that, relatively speaking, men are financial daredevils who like risk and that women are cautious and want security.