The Globe and Mail's Smart Money section is dedicated to giving you what you need to manage your personal finances successfully. Smart Money appears every Saturday in The Globe and Mail and on globeinvestor.com.

Some ETFs to help you catch the bull

By ROB CARRICK

For rank and file investors, this bull market's a drag.The SandP/TSX composite index reached new highs this week, but many investors have had barely a taste of it. Popular equity funds have been lagging the index badly of late and, anyway, lots of investors have been avoiding the markets altogether. Last week, CIBC World Markets said investors are using bank accounts and money market funds to park $45-billion that would normally be in the stock market.

Poor returns, tax jitters hurt sales of labour capital funds

By SHIRLEY WON

Labour sponsored venture capital funds are losing traction.Sales of these investments, which do not include redemptions, plunged 58 per cent to $164-million in the first quarter from $396-million last year, according to figures from Thomson Reuters.

Thomson ratings highlight top Canadian stocks

By SCOTT ADAMS

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?Let's look at a system that ranks Canadian stocks in the SandP/TSX composite by earnings, fundamental performance, relative valuation, price momentum and risk analysis. We'll take the system from Thomson ONE's Stock Reports Plus. MORE on THOMSON RATINGS Each stock receives a score from one to 10 (10 is highest) on each of the five categories mentioned above, and is then given a total score of one to 10. The total score is more than just an average of the five categories, as stocks are run through several other statistical and relative tests to arrive at a final ranking.

The Fly is all the buzz in blogosphere

By ROB CARRICK

With oil and gas prices at current levels, the favourite blog of Report on Business readers says you'd have to be @#$%-ing nuts not to own energy stocks.That's iBankCoin for you. Profane, impudent and No. 1-ranked in the popularity contest that ran for the past week on ReportonBusiness.com. Last Tuesday, five ROB columnists and Howard Lindzon, a portfolio manager and founder of the Wallstrip.com website, each presented their five favourite blogs. Readers were then given the chance to vote online for their top choices among these blogs.

How to ride escalating interest rates

By ROB CARRICK

And now for the good news about the looming runup in interest rates.If you're choking on the low returns available from bonds and guaranteed investment certificates, relief is coming. Want to be ready for it? Money market funds are an ideal vehicle.

Muni-bond meltdown: Could California be setting a trend?

By HARRY KOZA

When I was back in B school, our marketing professor once told the class that if you wanted an idea for a new business, you should just go to California and see what the current hot concept is out there, then wait two years and start one in Toronto.

Watching if Sprott can handle life in the heavyweight class

By TOM BRADLEY

On my way to a breakfast meeting recently, I walked by the ''Opening Soon' Apple store in Vancouver's Pacific Centre Mall. I know how hot that store is going to be because I was shoehorned into the Toronto outlet the week before. But I thought to myself, I'm going to see a company that's even hotter - Sprott Inc.

Picking up on all the right Points

By FABRICE TAYLOR

Consumers love their loyalty points but investors don't like Points International, or at least not as much as they used to. The stock is down more than 50 per cent from its peak.

RBC writedowns no cause for worry

By ANDREW WILLIS

To bring a perspective to Royal Bank of Canada's $855-million of writedowns yesterday, a good question to ask might be: ''Does the bank seem to know what it's doing?''

The dirty little secret of income trusts: cash flow

By FABRICE TAYLOR

It's been almost a year since the bean-counting authorities in this country tried to nudge income trusts into being a little more forthright about what they call distributable cash.