Globe and Mail personal finance columnist Rob Carrick brings you the Personal Finance Reader, his twice-weekly picks for the best online reading about money, the markets and more. If you're having trouble reading this newsletter or want to read the archives, click here.

Found something on the Internet that your fellow investors might enjoy? Talk to me at rcarrick@globeandmail.com.

From Rob Carrick This Week

Tales of investor abuse

Rob Carrick explores the nature of investing complaints in this Let's Talk Investing video

Must reads from The Globe and Mail

Tool to check on investment adviser proves popular

More than 60,000 reports pulled since the online service began a year ago

Herd analysts are putting lipstick on every pig

The instinct to follow the pack doesn’t serve investors well

Ponzi? No, but high fund payouts can’t go on forever

John Heinzl clears up some of the misinformation about high-return funds

These markets are making me queasy. What can I do?

Advice for investors in these turbulent times

Put your dining out budget on a diet

These tips will help you deflate your bloated restaurant bills

What does retirement really cost?

The price of an annuity is actually a market signal of what retirement really costs, says Moshe Milevsky

Must Reads From Around the Web

How The Rich Handle A Falling Stock Market

Panic? What panic? According to this analysis by a firm called PriceMetrix, millionaire households were busy making changes to their investments in the stock market volatility of this past August and they did more buying than selling.

The Occupied Speak

One of my best laughs of the week came from this “Letter From Goldman Sachs” in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

There’s No Place Like Home

The Economic Analyst blog takes a run at those who think there’s a “soft landing” ahead for the housing market after a long run-up in prices. Just to be clear, the forecast is not for higher prices. “The balance of probabilities leans strongly towards a house price correction,” it says here.

Big Stocks Going Nowhere

Read here about Wal-Mart and other big U.S. companies with share prices lower than they were a decade ago. Note that dividends would have provided some returns over this period.

High Rates, High Risk?

Oddity: If you’re shopping around for the best rates on GICs, you’ll sooner or later come across several online banking operations run by Manitoba-based credit unions. Included in this group are Hubert Financial at 3.55 per cent for a five-year GIC and both Achieva Financial and Outlook Financial at 3.5 per cent (big bank posted five-year rates are around 1.75 per cent). The complication here is that credit unions aren’t members of the federally backed Canada Deposit Insurance Corp. Instead, they belong to provincial credit union deposit insurance plans. How solid is Manitoba’s provincial plan? Here’s a thread on the Canada High Interest Savings Bank Accounts forum on this topic. It was sparked by a letter from a financial planning firm to Manitoba’s credit union regulator that raises the question of whether the province’s credit unions are paying “unrealistically high interest rates” on GICs, and whether consumers are misunderstanding the solidity of the deposit insurance that backs these products.

Grading Your Adviser

Ten signs your investment adviser isn’t doing a good job.

Mortgage Rate Risk

What rising interest rates will do to your variable-rate mortgage.

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All-Star Investor, investment ideas from the best and the brightest minds in the business using StarMine's equity analyst rankings and Lipper's mutual fund manager rankings.