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Investor Protection: The Scorpion and the Frog
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A report prepared for the Consumers Council of Canada for presentation to the Office of Consumer Affairs Industry Canada
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Posted by root on Saturday, September 04 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: The Value of Advice -- an Investor Viewpoint
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Canadian retail investors are exposed to financial markets that are among the most developed yet poorly regulated in the world. They enjoy an overwhelming supply of products and services to address their financial and investment needs. Advice is a component of this unduly complex marketplace. Canadians historically have chosen to invest and manage their financial decisions with the help of advisors. But things are changing . According to J. D. Power and Associates, one third of full service brokerage clients also do some investing online, and 26% of bank mutual fund investors are also using the online channel.
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Posted by root on Saturday, August 14 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Using and understanding the InvestorEd Mutual Fund Fee impact calculator
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All you have to do is enter the gross return of the fund (referred to as the Market Return which could be misunderstood as the benchmark index return), the annual fee, any applicable loads and the number of years.
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Posted by root on Saturday, September 12 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Control Your Own Destiny or Someone else Will
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For any number of reasons there is an increased interest in Do-it-yourself investing (DIY) .Whether its investment dealer shenanigans, greedy commission- driven advisers, high mutual fund fees, the non-bank ABCP meltdown, the Earl Jones fiasco, poor fund performance or advisor fraud, retail investors are looking at alternatives to the commission-driven advisor channel...
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Posted by root on Saturday, September 12 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: STREETPROOFING FOR INVESTORS
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SIPA Public Forum - Markham - 6 June, 1999 , STREETPROOFING FOR INVESTORS :STRATEGIES FOR MOVING BEYOND HOPE, GREED AND FEAR by Glorianne Stromberg
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Posted by root on Saturday, September 12 @ 00:00:00 EDT (437 reads)
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Investor Protection: Undisclosed Risks and Hazards in Mutual Fund Investing
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While mutual funds help reduce issuer –specific risk through diversification, they introduce a plethora of new threats to satisfactory returns that are inherent in their legal / tax structure, fees/commissions and industry sales practices. These threats are not articulated in the fund prospectus. Subtle hazards specific to the fund include “soft “ dollars (brokerage business given to brokers in exchange for research but sometimes for other goodies-there’s a reason the word soft is used), and the hazards of style drift (consciously deviating from the fund’s stated investment policies, risk profile and objectives to boost returns).
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Posted by root on Saturday, June 06 @ 00:00:00 EDT (982 reads)
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Investor Protection: Investors' Guide to Effective Complaints
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Over 10 million Canadians make investments in stocks, bonds, GIC’s and mutual funds. It’s a BIG business and highly profitable for the banks, fund companies, dealers and brokers. Mutual funds alone collect over $10 billion in fees each year. -the sales are commission based and include embedded sales commissions. When financially unsophisticated investors meet commission or quota- driven advisers, a toxic mixture can be created. So, it's not unnatural that problems will develop due to incompetence, greed, misrepresentation, or even administrative errors. This is where an effective investor complaint process can help you recover undue financial losses. A “Complaint” is defined to include any written or verbal statement of grievance from a client or any person acting on their behalf, former client or prospective client, alleging a grievance involving a firm or representative of a firm.
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Posted by root on Thursday, April 30 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: SPECIAL REPORT-INVESTOR PROTECTION IN CANADA 2008
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While the Chairmen of provincial securities regulators publicize their wonderful contributions to regulation, investors suffered badly. Billions of dollars were lost to unsuitable investments, excessive fees and leveraging, misleading marketing, fraudulent funds and crooked advisers and brokers. Here’s a small sampling of the rattraps retail investors had to endure in 2008.
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Posted by root on Friday, December 12 @ 23:00:00 EST (1604 reads)
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Investor Protection: What the ABCP Fiasco Teaches Us
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“This latest financial crisis [ ABCP] should serve as a wake up call for Government to finally take action on reforming the regulatory system and providing investor protection that isn't dependent upon self regulation and the charity of an industry that has a history of creating structured investment vehicles that can't be understood by ordinary investors, and exemption orders to allow regulations to be ignored” –Stan Buell, President, Small Investor Protection Association, www.sipa.ca
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Posted by root on Saturday, April 26 @ 00:00:00 EDT (1871 reads)
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Investor Protection: OBSI Survival Guide
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This Guide has one purpose: To assist your efforts at obtaining a restitution recommendation from OBSI.
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Posted by root on Monday, October 15 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: The violence of white-collar crime
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“.. Mr. Diekmeyer, 73, says he lost $800,000 - his life's savings - when Bre-X collapsed. He also saw his personal friend and stock broker kill himself in 1997, riddled with guilt about his clients' losses."I survived with great difficulty and a friend of mine committed suicide over it," says Mr. Diekmeyer, who lives in a modest apartment in Beaconsfield, west of Montreal. "I only know this story. I'm fairly certain there are others that are equally disastrous…"
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Posted by root on Wednesday, August 29 @ 00:00:00 EDT (3371 reads)
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Investor Protection: Financial advisors: friend or foe?
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If you have some important legal work to be done, you typically would refer to a lawyer.
If you're putting up a new house you’d have an architect draw up the plans.
Professionals, who spend their time learning their craft and keeping up-to-date, can
indeed be helpful. The same is true for financial planning and advice, with some notable
exceptions. Not all of us have the time, inclination or knowledge to take care of our own
financial affairs. Survey after survey, has in fact shown that a large number of Canadians
lack adequate financial literacy.
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Posted by root on Sunday, August 14 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: The Deferred Sales Charge
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The DSC is an alternative to a
front-load sales charge where the sales commission is paid at the time
of purchase. The funding for the commission of a DSC sold fund is
embedded in the management fee.
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Posted by root on Tuesday, April 12 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Seniors and Mutual Funds
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At 50, most seniors know how much
money they have saved, can estimate how much more will be saved/earned
before retirement and have a pretty good idea of how much will be
needed on a monthly/annual basis to support their desired retirement
lifestyle, “the golden years”.
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Posted by root on Thursday, March 10 @ 23:00:00 EST (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Closet Indexing
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The main reason investors take a chance on a actively managed fund, with its higher costs, is the hope of consistently beating the benchmark index by a meaningful margin. A Closet Index fund is a fund that basically buys what’s in a benchmark index but portrays itself as an actively managed fund.
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Posted by root on Wednesday, March 09 @ 23:00:00 EST (2157 reads)
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Investor Protection: Asset Allocation using Mutual Funds
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Asset allocation is traditionally
defined as the process of determining how your investment portfolio
should be invested (asset classes selected and mix of asset classes
selected ) among the different asset classes based on your financial
goals, time horizon and risk tolerance. Risk is often defined as "the
probability that a plan will not meet its long-term objectives. The key
risk factors to consider are inflation, interest rate, economic, market
and specific risk. Asset allocation reduces portfolio volatility and
risk. ( In statistical terms, you're looking for a combined standard
deviation that's low, relative to the standard deviations of the
individual securities. The result should give you a high average rate
of return, with less of the harmful fluctuations.) Other portfolio
design considerations include how much you want to pass on to heirs,
your future income stability-employment et al and professional or
business ownership .In the latter case, a Seg fund, not considered a
security from a regulatory context, might make sense to achieve
creditor protection and some growth.
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Posted by root on Tuesday, August 16 @ 00:00:00 EDT (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Financial Web sites worth a visit
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There are dozens if not hundreds of web sites related to mutual fund investing. The list below should just about cover every possible need for a serious Canadian mutual fund investor. Educational articles, Prospectuses/Annual Reports fees, performance, prices, impact calculators, checklists, mathematical formulas, regulatory issues and warnings/pitfalls are all available on-line mostly for free. The sites have been chosen based on their quality, usefulness, accuracy and industry- independent viewpoint.
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Posted by root on Wednesday, October 12 @ 00:00:00 EDT (3632 reads)
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Investor Protection: Analyze Fund Ads for Clues
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According to Nielsen Media Research, Canada's mutual fund industry spent $67.3-million on advertising in 2000. That figure plunged dramatically to $13.5-million last year. The fund industry has consolidated, margins have been squeezed and discretionary advertising budgets cut.
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Posted by root on Saturday, February 05 @ 23:00:00 EST (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Exemption Order Relief
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An exemption order is basically a decision of a provincial securities Regulatory Commission that says that a specific part of the Securities Act, regulations or rules relating to the trading of securities in that province does not apply under certain conditions. (or that the part can be amended under specified conditions) Often this relief allows a mutual fund company to avoid compliance with some sections of the official requirements or to modify the original requirements with the blessing of the applicable provincial securities regulator(s). For mutual fund investors the main documents of interest are NI81-101 Mutual fund prospectus requirements, NI81-102 Mutual funds and NI81-105 Mutual Fund sales practices. It’s up to the securities commissioners hearing the relief application to consider the possible “public interest” implications of a proposed exemption, and to apply this test on a case-by-case basis. Although mentioned frequently, the concept of the “public interest” isn’t well defined in the legislation; it is typically interpreted as a regulatory commission’s general obligation to balance investor protection with fair and efficient capital markets.
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Posted by root on Monday, March 27 @ 23:00:00 EST (0 reads)
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Investor Protection: Defined Contribution Pension Plans & Mutual Funds
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The Canadian pension landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade. Your pension plan may have changed along with it to reduce costs and future financial obligations to employers. Many companies have switched from traditional defined benefit pension plans to Defined Contribution pension Plans. Employers generally prefer them because it means they're not responsible for funding benefits when pension fund investments perform poorly. Employers, facing global competition, have become less generous than they had been in the past with pension benefits. Corporate restructurings have left many people working for smaller businesses which usually don't offer generous pensions. It is also simpler for companies to plan and meet contribution obligations since they are generally predictable fixed amounts. Yet, on the one hand, employees are expected to work harder, longer and smarter while on the other hand are expected to put more effort into financial decision-making.
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Posted by root on Monday, June 05 @ 00:00:00 EDT (4429 reads)
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Investor Protection: Complaints: Industry Rebuttals - Investor Counter-attacks
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Complaint resolution is one of the most recognized and pressing issues for consumers of the financial services industry. Anyone who has tried to navigate the complaint resolution system will attest to that. The journey is complex, long, distressing, frustrating and seemingly unfair.
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Posted by root on Tuesday, May 22 @ 02:26:45 EDT (1397 reads)
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