Recommended articles from Canadian Couch Potato investment blog

The Canadian Couch Potato blog is a large collection of articles on investing money using index funds and a passive management strategy. In my opinion, a passive investment strategy is the wisest choice for an individual investor, and the website is an excellent self-help resource for individual Canadians who want to learn how to invest their money sensibly.

The blog contains over 350 articles, and I’ve read or skimmed all of them in the course of a few months in year 2012. Since the sheer quantity of articles would be overwhelming and hardly helpful to a beginner investor, here I have chosen and highlighted articles that will give you the most understanding for your reading time.

The list is ordered so that the most important categories are at the top, and within each category the most important articles are at the top. Feel free to jump around while reading, and to skip some of the bottommost article links.

Introduction to index investing

• Couch Potato Basics, Part 1: Low Costs
• Couch Potato Basics, Part 2: Pure Asset Allocation
• Couch Potato Basics, Part 3: Transparency
• Couch Potato Basics, Part 4: Flexibility
• Couch Potato Basics, Part 5: Tax Efficiency
• Some Advice for New Potatoes
• Can Your Funds Outperform Over a Lifetime?
• Could You Have Picked the Winning Funds?

Overall portfolio – asset allocation and specific funds

• Model Portfolios
• Should You Use Index Funds or ETFs?
• Choosing a Canadian Bond Index Fund

Understanding risk

• Ready, Willing and Able to Take Risk
• How Much Risk Do You Need to Take?
• What Are Normal Stock Market Returns?

Asset allocation

• The 50-Percent Solution
• The Timeless Harmony of a Balanced Portfolio
• Are You Ready For a Venture?
• Rick Ferri’s Take on Gold

Bonds

• Why Every Portfolio Needs Bonds
• Holding Your Bond Fund for the Duration
• Bonds v. Bond Funds
• High-Yield Bonds and Your Portfolio: Part 1
• The Bond Dilemma

Human behaviors and fallacies in investing

• A Different Perspective On the Last Three Years
• Scary When They’re Down, Scary When They’re Up
• Why We Love the One We’re With
• Don’t Invest in the Rear-View Mirror
• How to Pick Last Year’s Winners
• Debunking Dividend Myths: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
• Investing Lessons From the Poker Table
• Can the Pros Time the Market?
• Why Staying the Course Isn’t “Doing Nothing”?
• Review: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes
• Random Thoughts

Tax optimization

• Put Your Assets in Their Place
• Foreign Withholding Tax Explained
• Tax-Loss Selling with Index Funds: Part 1

Rebalancing your portfolio

• Why Rebalance Your Portfolio?
• How Often Should You Rebalance?
• Does Rebalancing Boost Returns?
• How to Lower Your Rebalancing Costs

Foreign investment

• There’s No Place Like Home
• Ask the Spud: Does Home Bias Ever Make Sense?
• To Hedge or Not to Hedge
• Reducing the Cost of Currency Exchange

Nature of index funds

• How to Track Down Tracking Error
• Why We Still Need Indexes

Most of the Canadian Couch Potato posts were written by Dan Bortolotti, who works at PWL Capital. Benjamin Felix, another member of the same company, published a series of videos staunchly favoring passive investing; these videos explain the financial performance and mathematical reasons to justify the ideology. A blog partly written by Ben has content that partially overlaps with the videos. Justin Bender, another employee at PWL, has a series of videos covering more of the mechanics of passive investing.