Friday’s Close: Blythe on blogs, fund facts and must-read news

Friday’s Close is a new initiative to bring you something a little different — Scot Blythe presents his weekly round-up of the buzz on financial blogs, we bring you letters to the editor (send yours to editor@advisor.ca), must-read articles, quotes of the week and occasionally a funny or useful story to help you beat the recession blues.

Blythe’s best of the blogs This week: a little bit of humour mixed with the logic of quantitative easing. Scot Blythe also looks at the investment contrarian’s fascination with magazine covers and examines advice about how to perceive banking and regulation developments. Read more.

Quote of the week:

“Risk basically means portfolio volatility.” This view of risk is admittedly limited, particularly when advisors try to explain the concept to clients in an effort to help them determine their risk tolerance levels.

“The problem is that everyone tosses out average rates of return. You get huge variances with that.” Depending on the client, these variances, in real life application, can be terrifying to experience.

— Brian Wruk, CFP, Transitional Financial Advisors Inc. — David Luke, CFP, Wellington West Financial Services Inc.

From the article: Perspective: More than one way to think about risk.

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Must read this week:

• Finally, some good news for fund investors
• Practice values and the downturn
• Business value: Advisory practice case studies

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Fund Facts

Click here to check out the latest review of mutual fund vital signs from AdvisorCentric’s Jonathan Georges, CIM, FCSI. The overview outlines mutual fund industry asset growth, sales and performance; and product development highlights. It finds:

• The High Yield Fixed Income category enjoyed record-breaking sales for the second straight month ($417 million in February and $714.3 million year to date).

• The mutual fund industry shrank by $14.2 billion over the month of February.

• ETFs, new target date portfolios, dollar-cost-averaging funds — the Product Development Highlights section tells you who’s launching what.

• While mutual fund net sales are down compared to the same time last year, sales of long-term funds are up.

Do you have any thoughts about what you read on Advisor.ca? E-mail your comments to editor@advisor.ca or start a forum discussion with your peers here.

(04/03/09)