Ryan Lamontagne Inc.

European Sovereign Debt Problems Punish the Markets.  September was a difficult month for equity investors. Global stock exchanges entered bear market territory for the first time in since 2008. Coming out of the summer months, the global stock markets were already jittery because of weak economic growth, US fiscal challenges, fear of recession, and European debt problems. So it didn`t take much in the way of bad news to cause markets to plummet in the month of September.

Global stocks markets tumbled as much as 5% today, and the TSX was not immune to the broad based market sell-off. Investors around the globe appear to have woken up this Monday morning and decided that they were fed up of hearing about sovereign debt problems and so they went out and sold everything.

Twenty-one years ago the Toronto Stock Exchange launched the world’s first exchange-traded fund, the Toronto 35 Index Participation Units (TIPS). The advantages that ETFs offer have since been well chronicled. Support for low-cost, passive investing is broad and includes big names such as Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Charles Schwab..