Quotes of the Day

All of the banks have a brokerage arm-RBC Direct Investing, Scotia iTRADE, BMO InvestorLine and so on. There are a number of non-bank-owned firms with good offerings as well: Questrade, Qtrade and Virtual Brokers, to name a few. The Globe and Mail does a comprehensive review of all the major online brokerage every year, and this is worth searching for online. Most online brokerages waive administrative fees if your account balance (or the sum of all your accounts) is higher than a certain amount (e.g. $25,000). Commission-free trading is an excellent feature. Questrade has long offered free purchases of all ETFs, though you still pay their standard commission when you sell. Qtrade and Scotia iTRADE have a limited menu of ETFs that trade commission-free. National Bank Direct offers commission-free trades on ETFs as long as you purchase at least 100 shares at a time. [2021] - Dan Bortolotti

Most lenders require a DCR (debt coverage ratio) of at least 1.20 in order to finance an income property. A property with a 1.20 DCR has income before debt service that is 1.20 times as much as the debt service--in other words, the property generates 20% more net income than it needs to make its mortgage payments. [2004] - Frank Gallinelli

Bonds have historically returned almost 5% annually, according to the data from Credit Suisse. It's hard to see how an investor could expect that to continue in the foreseeable future, with high-quality bonds in many countries yielding less than 1%. One place to look for a realistic estimate of future returns for bonds is to invest the web page of an ETF that tracks the overall Canadian bond market, such as the Vanguard Canadian Aggregate Bond Index ETF (VAB). Look for the fund's "yield to maturity": this is the total return you should expect if interest rates don't change. [2021] - Dan Bortolotti

When you buy stock you are buying a part ownership in a company. When you buy bonds you are loaning money to a company or government agency. If you are going to hold bonds, holding them in an index fund is the way to go. Very few individual investors opt to buy individual bonds, with U.S. treasuries being the main exception, along with bank CDs witch act like bonds. [2016] - J L Collins

Make sure that the mutual funds you are interested in have at least a five-year track record. Most business cycles last three to five years. You also want to look at bad years such as 1991, 1994, 2001, 2002, and 2008. [2009] - James DiGeorgia