Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for October 16th, 2008

As I did mention, one day does not a recovery make and yesterday we saw just how volatile the roller coaster that is the Stock Market is going to be. The gains that were seen earlier in the week have mostly been nullified and we are back in the deep blood red side of the market. Is it time to panic? Nope, but it might be time to have a drink and just stop looking too. 

Run Away From Mutual Funds?

Evidently there is a bit of a run going on for a lot of Mutual Funds (in Canada at least) according to our friends at the IFIC (Investment Funds Institute of Canada).

IFIC said total assets under management plunged to $633.6 billion at month-end, down 8.9 per cent from August 2008 and 9.7 per cent from a year earlier.

Investors pulled $2.46 billion out of money market funds and $1.99 billion from long-term funds, as credit markets seized up and Canada’s benchmark S&P/TSX stock index plummeted 2,108 points or 14.6 per cent.

Wonder why people are taking their money out of these funds? Will it maybe cause lower MER fees? No, it won’t but I figured I’d ask, but No, MER’s of 5% on some “premium” funds will continue unabated.

Cheap(er) MacBooks

Apple announced a below $1000 Macbook (in the U.S.) today, but the cheapest one for Canada is still over $1200. I’d take one if someone wishes to send me one, and I’ll even write a review from a financial perspective about how it works with Quicken and other financial tools, honest, I would!

Given I can buy a PC laptop for $500 or so, I just don’t “get” the whole cache to do with Apple computers. The technology side it is interesting because it has a LINUX based kernel and such, but honestly, it is not worth that much more, in my opinion.