By Jonathan Chevreau
Financial Post
February 25, 2012
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Fifteen+years+futility/6208232/story.html
Paterson says the strong 15-year performance of dividend funds highlights the importance of dividends to returns. Dividend funds generated an extra 2%: 7.6% versus 5.6% for plain-vanilla Canadian equity funds. And dividends will remain important, given expectations of lower returns and higher volatility.
He’s also struck by how inffective balanced funds were. The average return for Canadian-neutral balanced funds was 4.4%, but a comparable portfolio of the average Canadian equity fund (5.6%) and average bond fund (4.7%) would have earned 5.2%.