Guides
Plain-English, data-backed guides on backtesting, portfolio strategy, risk, and retirement, each one tied to a free tool you can run on your own holdings.
How to Backtest a Portfolio: A Free, Step-by-Step Guide
What backtesting is, how to run one in minutes, how to read every metric, and the common mistakes that make a backtest lie to you.
Read the guide →StrategiesThe 60/40 Portfolio: Returns, Drawdowns, and Whether It Still Works
The logic behind 60% stocks / 40% bonds, how it held up through every recent crash, the 2022 problem, and how to test it on your own numbers.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationHow to Tell If Your Portfolio Is Actually Diversified
Why owning more funds doesn't mean diversified, how correlation measures it, why it fails when you need it most, and how to check your holdings.
Read the guide →RetirementThe 4% Rule, Explained: How Long Will Your Retirement Savings Last?
Where the 4% rule comes from, why it's only a starting point, why sequence risk is the real danger, and how to test your own number.
Read the guide →StrategiesThe Efficient Frontier, Explained (Without the Math Headache)
The risk-return tradeoff made visual: what the frontier is, the two portfolios everyone cares about, and the catch to watch for.
Read the guide →StrategiesLump Sum vs Dollar-Cost Averaging: What the Data Says
Whether to invest a windfall all at once or spread it out, what history favors, and why the right answer is partly about your stomach.
Read the guide →StrategiesLazy Portfolios, Explained: Simple Index Mixes That Beat Most Investors
A handful of low-cost index funds, set-and-forget: why it works, the classic recipes, and how to test one on real data.
Read the guide →RetirementHow Much Do I Need to Retire? A Simple Way to Find Your Number
The 25x rule of thumb, why your spending drives the number, what shifts it, and how to pressure-test your own plan.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationMaximum Drawdown: Why the Worst Loss Matters More Than the Average Return
The largest peak-to-trough loss: why it's the number that makes people sell, how it differs from volatility, and how to measure yours.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationThe Sharpe Ratio, Explained: Are You Being Paid for the Risk You Take?
Return per unit of risk, in plain English: the formula, what counts as good, its blind spots, and how to see yours.
Read the guide →Getting startedMonte Carlo Simulation, Explained: Planning for a Range of Futures
Why one average projection lies, what running thousands of scenarios tells you, and how to read the probability of success.
Read the guide →Getting startedStocks vs Bonds: How They Differ and How to Mix Them
Ownership vs lending, growth vs ballast, and how to choose the split that fits your timeline and nerves.
Read the guide →Getting startedHow to Read a Stock's Fundamentals (Without an Accounting Degree)
The handful of numbers that describe the business behind a ticker (growth, profitability, health, valuation, dividends) in plain English.
Read the guide →StrategiesPortfolio Rebalancing, Explained: Why and How to Reset Your Mix
Why your mix drifts, how resetting it controls risk and enforces discipline, and the simplest ways to do it.
Read the guide →StrategiesVOO vs VTI: S&P 500 or Total US Market (and Does It Matter?)
Two popular index ETFs that are more alike than different: what each holds, the real distinction, and how to check it yourself.
Read the guide →StrategiesAsset Allocation by Age: How Your Mix Should Change Over Time
Why your mix should shift from growth toward stability over time, the rules of thumb, and what actually matters more than age.
Read the guide →Getting startedIndex Funds vs ETFs: What's the Difference and Which Should You Pick?
Same holdings, different wrapper: how they trade, automate, and get taxed, and why the holdings matter more than the label.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationShould You Invest Internationally? Home-Country Bias, Explained
Why most investors overweight their home market, the real case for going global, and how to check the diversification benefit yourself.
Read the guide →Getting startedDividends vs. Price Growth: Where Your Returns Really Come From
The two engines of total return (price appreciation and dividends): how each one contributes, and why reinvesting dividends quietly does so much of the work over long horizons.
Read the guide →Getting startedRisk Tolerance vs. Risk Capacity: How Much Risk Should You Actually Take?
Two different questions (what you can stomach vs. what your finances can absorb), and why the lower answer should set your allocation.
Read the guide →RetirementSequence-of-Returns Risk: Why the Order of Returns Can Make or Break a Retirement
Same average return, completely different outcomes: why the order of returns matters once withdrawals start, and how to defend your plan.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationWould Your Portfolio Have Survived 2008? How to Stress Test It
Replay real crises against your exact holdings, apply hypothetical shocks, and learn your worst case before the market teaches it to you live.
Read the guide →StrategiesFactor Investing, Explained: What's Actually Driving Your Returns
The handful of return drivers behind most portfolios: what each factor means, how to read a factor analysis, and the honest caveats.
Read the guide →Getting startedReal vs. Nominal Returns: Why Inflation Is the Loss You Never See
The return your statement shows and the return your life gets are different numbers: what real returns are, why the gap compounds, and how to check yours.
Read the guide →StrategiesHow Much Cash Should You Hold in a Portfolio?
Cash is safety you can spend and growth you quietly give up: how to separate the emergency fund from the portfolio, and what different cash levels have cost.
Read the guide →StrategiesHow to Invest in the S&P 500 from Canada (VFV, VOO, and Hedging)
The Canadian-dollar ways to own the S&P 500, what currency does to your return, hedged vs unhedged, and how to test the exact tickers on real data.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationCurrency Risk and Hedging: Should You Hedge Your Foreign Investments?
Why a foreign holding’s return depends on the exchange rate, how hedged and unhedged funds differ, when a hedge earns its cost, and how to test it.
Read the guide →RetirementTarget-Date Funds Explained: Glide Paths, Fees, and the DIY Alternative
What a target-date fund actually holds, how its glide path shifts over time, the fee and design trade-offs, and how to test the one in your retirement plan.
Read the guide →Getting startedTotal Return vs. Price Return: Why the Index Chart Understates Reality
Price return counts only price moves; total return adds reinvested dividends. The gap compounds into a huge difference, and mixing the two conventions quietly distorts comparisons.
Read the guide →Getting startedExpense Ratios Explained: What a 1% Fee Really Costs You
What an expense ratio is, why a small annual fee compounds into a large lifetime cost, which fees actually matter, and how to measure yours in dollars.
Read the guide →StrategiesTime in the Market vs. Timing the Market: What the Data Says
The case against in-and-out investing: best days cluster beside worst days, missing a few of them costs decades of compounding, and the exit is only half a timing decision.
Read the guide →Getting startedCompound Growth Explained: Why Starting Early Beats Saving More
How compounding actually works, the rule of 72 shortcut, and the head-start math: why an early start with small deposits routinely beats a late start with big ones.
Read the guide →Getting startedHow to Start Investing: A Plain-English Order of Operations
The sequence that keeps beginners out of trouble: stabilize your finances, pick the account, pick a boring diversified mix, automate it, and test it on history before trusting it.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationBear Markets: How Deep They Go, How Long They Last, and What Recovers
The historical anatomy of bear markets: how deep, how long, how they recovered, why balanced portfolios behave differently, and how to rehearse one before living one.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationEmployer Stock and Single-Stock Concentration: How Much Is Too Much?
How RSUs quietly concentrate net worth, why one stock's risk is different in kind from the market's, common rules of thumb for limits, and how to measure your own exposure.
Read the guide →StrategiesVEQT vs XEQT: Canada's All-in-One ETFs, Compared
The two flagship Canadian all-equity one-fund ETFs compared: home bias, fees, structure, what actually differs in outcomes, and how to test the choice on data.
Read the guide →RetirementRRSP vs TFSA for Investors: How to Think About the Choice
The mechanics of Canada's two shelters, the single question (tax rate now vs at withdrawal) that drives the choice, and the common patterns, without pretending to be tax advice.
Read the guide →Getting startedSeven Expensive Investing Mistakes (and the Numbers Behind Them)
Seven mistakes that cost real money (panic selling, chasing winners, fee blindness, concentration, cash drag, benchmark confusion, no plan), each with the number that makes it concrete.
Read the guide →StrategiesRobo-Advisors vs. DIY Index Investing: What the Fee Buys You
What a robo-advisor actually does, what the management layer costs over decades, the cases where it earns its fee, and how to price the decision on your own balance.
Read the guide →Getting startedThe Average Stock Market Return (and Why You Almost Never Get It)
Where the famous 10% average comes from, why individual years almost never land near it, the CAGR vs simple-average trap, and how to plan with ranges instead of one number.
Read the guide →StrategiesQQQ vs VOO: Higher Returns, Deeper Drops, and More Overlap Than You Think
Nasdaq-100 vs S&P 500: what each fund holds, the overlap most people miss, 15 years of real numbers, why QQQ fell less than the S&P 500 in some crashes and far more in others, and how to decide.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationThe Worst Timing in History: $10,000 Invested at Every Market Peak, Measured Today
The unluckiest investor in each of the last five crashes bought at the exact top. With dividends reinvested, every one of them is ahead today; the dot-com buyer turned $10,000 into $78,103.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationThe Diversification That Disappears: What Your Funds Do When Stocks Crash
Correlations are not constant. Measured on daily data since 2008, utilities went from 0.53 in calm markets to 0.76 in crashes, and in 2022 even long Treasuries stopped hedging.
Read the guide →StrategiesThe Smith Maneuver Explained: Turning Your Mortgage Into an Investment Portfolio
A Canadian strategy that makes mortgage interest deductible by re-borrowing every dollar of principal to invest. Worked through on a $400,000 mortgage: it only pays when the portfolio beats about 3.0% a year, and a crash leaves the debt untouched.
Read the guide →StrategiesThe One-Page Investment Plan: Write Your Rules Down Before the Market Tests Them
Five decisions, made while markets are calm, that tell you exactly what to do when they aren't. Write yours in two minutes.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationBond Duration Explained: Why "Safe" Bonds Fell 30% in 2022
The number that sets how far a bond fund falls when rates rise: the rule of thumb, real 2022, 2008 and 2020 results by fund, and why duration cuts both ways.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationShould You Own Gold? What It Did in Every Crash Since 2008
What gold really did while stocks crashed in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, how it compares with long bonds as a cushion, and how investors size it.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationDo Dividend Stocks Hold Up in a Crash? SCHD, VYM and VIG Since 2008
What SCHD, VYM, VIG and JEPI really did while the S&P 500 crashed in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, and what a dividend can and cannot do for you in a selloff.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationShould You Own REITs? What Real Estate Funds Did in Every Crash Since 2008
What a broad REIT fund really did while the S&P 500 crashed in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, why interest rates matter so much, and how investors size a real estate slice.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationDo Defensive Stocks Protect You? Staples, Health Care and Utilities in Every Crash Since 2008
What consumer staples, health care and utilities really did while the S&P 500 crashed in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, where the defensive label failed, and what a defensive tilt costs.
Read the guide →Getting startedHow Sure Is Your Success Rate? Why One Monte Carlo Number Can Mislead You
The same plan, the same portfolio, and a success rate that moves by more than 25 points with the assumptions behind it. What moves it, what does not, and how to plan around it.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationAre Small-Cap Stocks Riskier? Small Caps vs the S&P 500 in Every Crash Since 2008
What small-cap stocks really did while the S&P 500 crashed in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, how long they took to get back, and why the index you pick changes the answer.
Read the guide →Risk & diversificationEqual-Weight S&P 500 vs the Regular S&P 500: RSP vs SPY in Every Crash Since 2008
What the equal-weight S&P 500 really did against the regular index in 2008, 2018, 2020 and 2022, why it protected you in only one of those crashes, and what it costs to own.
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