Talk:Canadian equities

We have pages for "US equities", "international equities", and "emerging markets". But we don't have a dedicated page for Canadian equities. Rather, the information is spread all over the place, notably in the "common shares" page. So I propose to move some contents from "Common shares" to this new page. Then the "Common shares" page would be made less Canadian-centric, as we can also purchase foreign common shares.

After that the Template:Equities_sidebar would have to be reorganized: Common shares / Hedge funds / Hybrid securities / Preferred shares / Private equity / Real estate investment trust would appear under "types of equities" or something like-that (but not under a Canadian-specific category). Then instead of "International Equities" we would have a "By geography" category in the template, with Canadian / US / Intl / EM. --Quebec 05:17, 7 February 2015 (MST)


 * You are not the first one to try and address this, see Talk:Common shares/Archive 1 for background. You might want to also look that the Talk pages of some of the articles you mention, there is probably some history there as well. One thought to remember, we're a Canadian site, so everything is seen from a Canadian investor's point of view. I would postulate that if you asked most Canadians about 'common shares' they will think something trading on the TSX. --Peculiar Investor 08:14, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * There is a Canadian Equities page, that currently redirects to Equities. --Peculiar Investor 08:16, 7 February 2015 (MST)


 * I'm thinking about Mr. Newbie mostly: he has no preconcieved ideas about domestic vs. foreign assets. We want Mr. Newbie to read getting started first. There, he finds out about portfolio design, and asset allocation. Maybe he ends up at Balanced funds, or maybe at Simple index portfolios. Let's say he wants to implement a three fund portfolio with ETFs. The Vanguard Canada ETFs used in the table look good, but he'd like to know about "Suitable alternatives from other vendors" so he clicks on "Canadian equities". But he ends-up at Common shares, where he is told about different voting rights for common vs. preferred shares, dividend cycles, and different equity investment styles. Totally confusing. Instead, when Mr Newbie clicks on "Canadian equities" in the Simple index portfolios page, we should send him to a page that says something about what this sub asset class is in a few words, the diversification issue for the Canadian market, and what are the index funds and plain vanilla ETFs to look at. --Quebec 08:47, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * I follow your line of thinking and I've been there as the talk pages document. In my mind, the challenge is two-fold however, first and foremost each article should stand-alone as the best knowledge on the article topic to that no matter how a reader reaches the article, it makes sense. They could come via search engine, internal article links, FWF discussions or even the 'Random page' link in the left sidebar. You get the idea. From that point of view, the common shares article works. As you correctly point out, it doesn't work so well as someone navigates through the wiki from article to article. While we want this to make some sense, by design wikis are a loose interconnection of information, not a series of chapters in a book that has been constructed to have a cohesive flow. I'm just suggestion that both reader points of view need to be considered, with the additional challenge to try and minimize duplicating information. That's what makes the whole wiki structure interesting, the navigation path for each reader is likely very different. --Peculiar Investor 09:38, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * I'm not giving up quite yet! We have two articles for cash: the new "Cash and cash equivalents", and the old "Short term cash returns", which serve different purposes. In the lead section (or the "see also" section) of each, the other article is mentioned. Similarly we could have two complementary articles for Canadian Equities: (1) "Canadian Equities"; (2) "Common shares". The former would be the equivalent of the US Equities article, but for Canada. The latter would cover all common shares, not only those of Canadian companies. --Quebec 11:02, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * During my stock picking phase, I quickly found out that the US markets offered much more choice in sectors such as health care, consumer staples, and IT. Also there is a lot more quality research available on US stocks (e.g. the S&P reports), and so on. So many of my purchases ended up being of US stocks. I think a few other FWF members also do stock picking south of the border; the DJIA, S&P500 and NASDAQ values are reported daily on the news (radio, TV, newspapers); many (all?) brokerage accounts have a USD side; so I would not assume that "if you asked most Canadians about 'common shares' they will think something trading on the TSX". --Quebec 11:13, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * Keep going, I'm just trying to provide background and other perspective for you to consider in your quest to improve things. --Peculiar Investor 11:34, 7 February 2015 (MST)
 * I've kept the Equities sidebar as is, except that the heading "Canadian equities" now links to this page. This avoids a major reorganization of the sidebar. --Quebec 08:00, 9 February 2015 (MST)

Ready for main space?
I've tried to move this article to main space, but it did not work because there is already an (empty) page called "Canadian equities" there. Is there a consensus that a "Canadian equities" page, as presented here, is a good idea? If so, can someone else perform the move? (I could copy and paste but it would not transfer the editing history). Thanks (when that's done I'll deal w/ the "common shares" article)--Quebec 17:25, 8 February 2015 (MST)
 * It was blocked by a redirect (pointer to Equities). I removed the redirect. Now, you need to figure out what to do with the "other" redirect: Canadian Equities - note "Equities" is capitalised.
 * There are 3 Pages that link to "Canadian Equities". Should they point to your new page or Equities? Perhaps Balanced fund should be revised.
 * Equities also needs to link to the new page. --LadyGeek 19:25, 8 February 2015 (MST)

I deleted Canadian Equities because I thought it was blocking the page move. It was not, "Canadian equities" was blocking the move. I restored the redirect. --LadyGeek 19:35, 8 February 2015 (MST)
 * The only pages that link to "Canadian Equities" are discussion pages. I propose to delete "Canadian Equities". --Quebec 07:57, 9 February 2015 (MST)
 * Several pages that linked to "Common shares" now link here (Canadian equities). I have not changed all links, because where I've kept them pointing to "Common shares", this is the correct destination (for example, in discussions on common vs preferred shares). --Quebec 07:57, 9 February 2015 (MST)