BMO was sued in a class action lawsuit for charging undisclosed fees on foreign exchange conversions in customers’ registered accounts between 2001 and 2011.  Customers of BMO Nesbitt Burns, BMO InvestorLine, and BMO Trust Company will get their share of the settlement before Oct. 8. A decade ago I calculated that I had spent $7374 in currency exchange costs while trading U.S. stocks since I had opened trading accounts at BMO InvestorLine .  When I heard about the class action settlement with BMO, I figured I’d only get back a tiny fraction of this money.  However, my wife and I are pleased to be getting a total of $2051 plus $955 in interest. It would be nice if BMO’s response to this lawsuit was to charge sensible foreign exchange fees, but they are much more likely to simply be more careful about meeting some legal standard of disclosure.  Unwitting customers will continue to rack up unreasonably high foreign exchange costs.

I enjoy feedback from my readers discussing the topics covered in my posts, even when they’re critical of my ideas. However, I get other email as well. Here is another installment of replies to emails that I usually ignore. Dear Andrew, Thank you for the kind words about my “content related to money.” You remind me of book publishers who see their jobs as trying to sell white bricks. I see you have quite a list of different ways to connect your client to topics that appear to be of interest to readers. If I ever decide it would be funny to subject my readers to dreck, I’ll contact you. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear Julia, Thanks you for yet another chance to share in the profits of duping people into losing their money in forex trading. After careful investigation, I’ve determined that I still have a conscience. Better luck next time. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear Jessica, Thank you for your offer to place sponsored guest ad...

I get a lot of great feedback from my readers. I get other email as well. Here is another installment of replies to emails that I usually ignore (see previous installments here and here ). Dear Melanie, Thank you for your offer to pay me so you can spam my readers with forex trading ads. It turns out that I don’t keep a list of my readers’ email addresses. Also, I don’t hate them. But if both of these things change, I’ll let you know. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear Vijay, Thank you for your email offering to sell me your penny-stock domain name as well as all three of your follow-up queries. In the careful study of my web site that you mention, you no doubt saw the synergy between my writing and pushing penny stocks. It’s baffling that I made no offer for your domain. I have no explanation. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear Julia, Thank you for yet another chance to join your forex affiliate program. I know that retail investor...

I get a lot of great feedback from my readers. I get other email as well. Here is another installment of replies to emails that I usually ignore (see the first one here ). Dear Julia, Thank you for the opportunity to profit from writing a post that directs my readers to your forex broker. Forex trading has all the advantages of trading against extremely highly skilled opponents without the built-in tendency for prices to rise that we see with stocks. If I ever lose my empathy for fellow human beings, I’ll take you up on your offer. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear Blair, Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical of your claimed ability to offer unbiased financial advice to Canadian seniors. What threw me off was the phrase “Gold Price” in your organization’s name and the reference to “proprietary trading algorithms.” When you say that current seniors are the wealthiest generation ever, is it your mission to cure them of this affliction? Sincerely, Michael

The premise behind the indexing approach to investing is to use a simple approach to get market average returns with a minimum of costs. This is usually done using index-based exchange traded funds (ETFs) or low-cost index mutual funds. Investors choose a mix of index funds and stick with it, possibly rebalancing periodically to maintain a preferred target percentage of assets in each fund. Once these decisions are made, the focus is on minimizing costs, including the cost of currency exchanges. If a Canadian investor chooses to own both Canadian- and U.S.-dollar funds, some amount of currency conversion will likely be necessary. All currency conversion involves spreads which are the difference between buy and sell prices. If you start with Canadian dollars, convert them to U.S. dollars, and then convert back to Canadian dollars, you'll have less money than when you started. The big question is how much less money will you have? For large dollar amounts traded in foreign ...