We often hear references to October being a bad time to invest. After all, the crashes of 1929 and 1987 were in October.  In order to check this out we pulled Bloomberg data for the performance of the DOW during each month going back to 1925. When we took the ...

A U.S. company, Synergy Viridis, LLC, has a windpower product that really makes sense. It consists of small wind turbines that can be installed on the the roofs of office and high rise residences. Each turbine produces 1.7 to 2.5 kw of power. As I look out the windows of ...

The Ontario government publishes an annual  list that details names, salaries, positions and taxable benefits of all individuals who made more than $100,000 per year and work in the public sector of the province. A quick look at Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) reveals some startling facts. Of ...

Today's news covers the announcement by the OECD of a third quarter recovery from the recession. The stories focus on how the OECD crystal ball sees the recovery in Canada being weaker than the other G7 members  and not starting till the fourth quarter of this year. There is some ...

During the 12 months ended June 2009, a total of 393,700 private sector employees lost their jobs. That's equivalent to the entire working populations of Regina SK, Windsor ON, St. John's NL, Saguenay, QC, Victoria, BC and Niagara Falls ON according to the 2006 census. Put another way, it is ...

As a quick and dirty test to see how stock performance reflects analyst recommendations, we looked at a few data points for 206 stocks on the TSX composite. We extracted the  year-to-date total returns as at July 27, 2009 and the analyst recommendation consensuses for six months ago. The rating scale goes from ...

We recently assembled the Canadian Business Investor 500 dated June 30, 2009. This list contains the largest 500 companies on Canadian exchanges by market capitalization which are then ranked by one year return. In the three months since the 500 was published in Canadian Business magazine, the market has shown ...

This spring's issue of Moneysense Magazine's Best Places to Live feature, which ranked 154 cities accross the country, put Victoria, B.C. in first place.  In order, the other cities of the top 10 were Ottawa, Kingston, Burlington, Vancouver, Moncton, Fredericton, Winnipeg, Peterborough and Brandon. Of the other cities with more ...

According to tax return statistics for 2006 issued by the Canada Revenue Agency, women in this country make an average of 39.5% less than men. This ranges from 18.3% less for women under 20 to 49.3% for women aged 60 to 64. Provincial numbers show a larger range. The smallest ...

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) notes that "national resale  housing market activity returned to pre-recession levels in May 2009" and that "year-over-year declines have been shrinking since the beginning of the year." The average national sale price reached a new record of $319,757, up 0.4% from the previous record ...