This past year has been a wild one for commodities — gold reached all time nominal highs, oil climbed from around $70 to almost $90, while natural gas bas barely budged from a low $4. Fortunately for investors, the outlook for 2011 is less volatile; commodity prices should be on their way up.
What’s the most important thing a financial advisor does for clients? Provide sound investment advice and financial planning that clients can rely on? Maybe. That is, after all, the primary role of the financial advisor.
Planning for the day a client passes away is one of an advisor’s more difficult tasks. It’s not just an emotional experience, it’s complex too. Although the practical tasks that accompany a death range from assisting with the will to finding an executor and working with powers of attorney, end of life issues often involve […]
“It was a strange situation,” says Michael Berton, recalling one of his more unusual estate planning cases. “But it’s what the family wanted to happen.” The story goes like this: Husband and wife, Chet and Marie (not their real names), had a joint account. It was assumed that since Chet, who had been in the […]
“It was a strange situation,” says Michael Berton, recalling one of his more unusual estate planning cases. “But it’s what the family wanted to happen.” The story goes like this: a husband and wife had a joint account and everyone had assumed that the man, who’d been in the hospital for 16 months, would be […]
Four years ago, Jack Simons had a blow-out with his financial advisor. His advisor’s partner gave Simons some bad investing advice and a stock went sour, costing the Toronto-based business consultant thousands of dollars. At the same time, Simons was beginning to feel frustrated with the high fees he was paying, so when he lost […]
As rocky as the global economic outlook remains, there will be no double dip recession said two of North America’s leading financial experts. At the CFA Institute’s annual dinner in Toronto, Patricia Croft, RBC Global Asset Management’s chief economist, and Bob Doll, vice-chairman and chief investment officer at New York-based BlackRock Advisors, both said the […]
This Advisor.ca Special Report is sponsored by: Most advisors will tell you that they want what’s best for the client; but they also want to get paid for their work. That can pose a problem for clients who need help choosing off-book assets such as a defined contribution plan or a group RRSP. “At the […]
Charley Tsai can’t help but smile as he thinks back to a story he heard about succession. The client was a business owner and was thinking about passing his company on to his son. “He was a real estate developer in his 80s,” says Tsai, vice-president of wealth planning support at TD Bank. “He had […]
A collective groan emanated across Canada when advisors outside of B.C. and Ontario found out that their clients would have to pay HST on their investment funds. However, when three fund companies — Dynamic, Brandes Investment Partners and EdgePoint Wealth — announced they would introduce non-HST series funds in July, those groans didn’t necessarily turn […]