Short Takes: Lottery Fictions, Recovering Madoff Losses, and more

Here are my posts for this week:

Evaluating Reasons to Avoid Index Funds

Dividends vs. Capital Gains in Retirement

Core and Explore

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

John Oliver (video) has a very funny and hard-hitting take on lotteries and the supposed good things they fund.

NBC News reports that more than $10 billion of losses from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme have been recovered to be given back to victims who will get back nearly 60 cents of each invested dollar. This is somewhat misleading, though. Victims will get back a percentage of what they put in, not including returns. So, a long-time investor whose investments had tripled on paper would only be getting 20% of the amount on his phony statements. But this is certainly better than nothing.

Jason Zweig reports on a study that found that individual forex traders lose an average of 3% per week. Remember this the next time you see a come-on for entering the supposedly profitable world of forex trading.

A Wealth of Common Sense shows that the impressive back tests on the “Tony Robbins All Weather Portfolio” are mainly the result of the 30-year bull market in bonds.

Million Dollar Journey takes a look at the subtle difference between using Norbert Gambit’s to exchange money from U.S. to Canadian dollars versus the other direction.

Big Cajun Man has some fun coming up with financial book titles. I liked “The Best Financial Arguments to have with your Spouse.”

Boomer and Echo asks whether banks should have a hand in promoting financial literacy. Another question: should cigarette companies have a hand in promoting quitting smoking?

John Heinzl does a good job of explaining why spousal RRSPs can still be valuable even though retirees are permitted certain types of income-splitting.

My Own Advisor explains that one of his motivations for managing his money well is that he doesn’t want to be part of the statistics of seniors carrying debt into their retirement years.