Short Takes: Hedge Fund Blow-up, Getting Laid Off, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

The Value of Delaying CPP and OAS

Is it Worth it to Hold U.S.-Listed ETFs?

Rising Dividends in ETFs

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

James Cordier lost all his clients’ money and made this weepy apology video (that. He blames the failure of his option trading strategy on a “rogue” market. The problem is that markets go rogue in many different ways frequently. If you take on too much risk, a potential blow-up is just around the corner.

Doug Hoyes interviews the Big Cajun Man to talk about what it was like to get laid off from Nortel and the lessons he learned.

Canadian Couch Potato uses his latest podcast to take a swipe at investing courses that focus on price-to-earnings ratios, segregated funds, and stock options instead of the things DIY investors really need to know. Teaching beginning investors how to analyze stocks is like teaching a 5-year old to operate a chainsaw. For the purposes of this analogy, most experienced stock pickers are like 8-year olds with chainsaws.

Andrew Coyne is concerned that Canada is still running a deficit during such good economic times. So am I.

Boomer and Echo list some rip-offs to avoid. The worst one in this list, in my opinion, is credit card balance protection insurance.

Big Cajun Man had to destroy another credit card he didn’t want but was sent to him anyway. I’ve heard of this practice of sending credit cards to people without their having applied, but it has never happened to me.