Short Takes: Investing Simplicity, Behavioural Bias Blind Spots, and more

I managed one post in the past two weeks:

Estimating the Value of 0% Financing

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Robb Engen at Boomer and Echo looks at the range of investment options from the point of view of doing it the easy way or the hard way. He finds the right balance of costs and convenience with owning one of Vanguard Canada’s all-in-one portfolio exchange-traded funds with the ticker VEQT. He avoids the troubles and potential mistakes that come with owning U.S.-listed ETFs. However, there is a middle ground. One can own a base of VCN and U.S.-listed ETFs along with some VEQT so that most rebalancing doesn’t require currency exchanges. This approach is still more complex than just owning VEQT, but eliminating most currency exchanges reduces complexity and the possibility of errors significantly. The benefit of this compromise approach is lower costs than just owning VEQT.

Canadian Couch Potato talks to Dr. Stephen Wendel, Head of Behavioural Science at Morningstar, about how we see behavioural biases in others but not ourselves.

Big Cajun Man encountered two-factor security for his banking login, but the security didn’t work out too well. Perhaps this bank is just doing a trial run.