AGF Management Limited
Fund manager Martin Grosskopf explains how AGF’s Acuity SRI funds carefully assess the environmental risks in a new form of natural gas extraction. more…
The Canada Pension Plan is the basic federal pension plan for all Canadians, so it’s important to know how it works, what you’re entitled to, and when. I wrote about the CPP basics in my last article. But it’s even more important to know about changes that are being made and how they might affect your retirement planning. And recently, the government has been tweaking the CPP all over the place.
A new RRSP season is upon us, and before long we will get inundated with advertisements telling us to invest in GICs or park our money in money market funds as an antidote to recent market volatility and a decade or so of muted returns from equity markets. We will read (and hear) more about negative news from the U.S. and Europe as they attempt to re-start the economic growth machine. It would be very tempting to “go safe” and put new money into these so called risk-free investments. But are they really all that risk free?
It’s a category that’s often overlooked these days, because inflation has been relatively low for many years – in the range of 2% to 3% annually. Nevertherless, Canadian Inflation-Protected Fixed-Income funds have generated some of the best returns on average of any category in the Fundata listings over the past five years. And of course, some individual funds, notably the IA Clarington Real Return Bond Fund, have handily exceeded those averages. Can they keep up the momentum?
Precious metals, especially gold, dominated the headlines last year. Did they also dominate fund performance? And which dull and plodding fund category outshone all others in a year characterized by uncertainty and market volatility? The answers may surprise you.
