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Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs) are designed to help Canadian parents save for their children’s post-secondary education. An RESP is a savings account that a parent, guardian, grandparent or other relative/friend (called a subscriber) over the age of 18 can open for a child under the age of 18 (called the beneficiary). An RESP can be used to cover any education-related expenses once enrolment in a qualifying post-secondary program can be confirmed. Eligible expenses can include tuition, books and transportation. The federal government provides a 20% Canadian Education Savings Grant (CESG) grant on the first $2,500 contributed annually, up to a lifetime maximum of $7,200 per child. Low- and middle-income families can also qualify for up to $2,000 from the Canadian Learning Bond (CLB).

It’s not exactly a newsflash that buying a first home in today’s Canada is only a pipedream for many. Prices soared to new highs across the nation during the heights of the Covid pandemic and, although we are now well off of those highs, the subsequent rampant run-up in interest rates has vastly decreased how much potential buyers can and should borrow. Making things even worse, 2022’s stock market decline chipped away at many potential down payments and the current stratospheric level of inflation means that a portion of many pay cheques earmarked towards home savings have been diverted to things like gas and groceries. The reality is that for many young Canadians, their only chance of getting into the housing market any time soon is from either playing the lottery or with a little help from someone else.

Last year, I interviewed 52 outstanding men and women from around the world for my research paper How smart women and men invest in themselves released on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023. I’ll share 10 ways that successful women invest in themselves:

Closer to the end of 2020, Peter Hodson and I, with Belco Private Capital Inc., launched the i2i Long/Short U.S. Equity Fund, a fund focused on small and mid-cap U.S. stocks. Naturally, being Canadian and operating in Canada, it begs the question of why U.S. small and mid-cap (SMID-cap) stocks are in the first place. So, let’s look at some of the reasons why we like U.S. SMID-caps. 

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The first reason is obvious; the SMID-cap space in the U.S. is multiple the size of the Canadian SMID-cap space. One of the reasons we like small and mid-cap names, to begin with, is that they tend to fly more under the radar, and markets tend to be slower to catch on to promising companies. As an example, we count roughly 57 analysts who cover Amazon. That is 57 people whose full-time job is

In the first part of this three-part series, we examined the basics of ESG investing. To reiterate, the E in ESG stands for environmental issues such as pollution and climate change, while the S represents a company’s social attitudes as in how it treats its employees, its customers, and its investors. Finally, the G for governance looks at issues such as boardroom diversity, executive compensation, conflicts of interest and shareholder rights.

A new generation of socially conscious investors is spreading its influence over the corporate world. Today’s investors are often millennials (typically those born between 1981 and 1996) who have grown up on a planet that is obviously getting warmer. They don’t want investment returns that come at the expense of the environment, nor results achieved without the guidance of people who have been historically underrepresented at senior management levels. Millennials won’t invest until they know a corporation’s environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) practices are fair and reasonable.

The TSX index was up some 3.3 % in December recovering from the onset of the Omicron virus due to strength in the Financials, Materials and Real Estate Sectors. Strong employment numbers and high commodity prices contributed to this result. Below we discuss the top and bottom-performing ETFs in Canada for the month of December. The table of the top and bottom three performing ETFs can be seen below: