What's a better investment, an old sports car or the stock market? asked the National Post’s Fred Langan in an April 23 column. He went to Moshe Milevsky, a finance professor at York’s Schulich School of Business, for an answer. "Sports cars are both consumption and investment," said Milevsky. "You pay for the psychic value with reduced investment gains." But even he was surprised at the outcome of his own research, wrote Langan. So what's the verdict? Stocks outdid cars. "The historical rate of return on a diversified portfolio of sports cars did not keep up with the TSE/TSX index," said Milevsky. "And, had we compared the car's returns against a diversified global equity portfolio and not just a narrow Canadian index, the out-performance margin would have been even higher." However," he said, "once you factor in management fees, investment expenses and income taxes, and [the fact] that very few people have the discipline and rigour to stay the course and avoid futile market timing, the financial rate of return on sports cars was surprisingly high. It was certainly better than I expected."
CBC Radio business columnist Michael Hlincka also talked to Milevsky about Bank of Canada interest rates and the right time to take advantage of low interest rates and lock in to a fixed mortgage rate, in an item aired on "Morning North" in Sudbury and "Morning Edition" in Saskatchewan April 22.
Theatre alumni in the spotlight
York fine arts alumni are getting top billing in the news media these days: Tara Rosling (BFA ’93), currently starring as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Shaw Festival, was profiled in the April issue of Toronto Life. Thea Gill (BFA ’92) made the cover photo and story in the Toronto Star’s Starweek Magazine April 17-23, as lead actor in Queer as Folk, which is returning for the fourth season on Showcase. Paola Poletto (BFA ’93) co-founder, co-publisher and art director of the 'zine Kiss Machine was mentioned in a feature article "The Zine Scene", by Nicole Cohen, in the Toronto Star April 13. Mark Cassidy (MFA ’99) is director of The Secret of Gabi's Dresser at the Al Green Theatre in Toronto, which received a four-star review by Richard Ouzounian in the Toronto Star April 16.
Horváth speaks to alumni of famous Indian school
Dezsö Horváth, dean of York's Schulich School of Business, is one of the keynote speakers at a Toronto gathering April 24 of alumni of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), reported The Globe and Mail April 23. IIT is a celebrated engineering college recently described by Leslie Stahl of "60 Minutes" as the most important university in the world that you have never heard of, with more brain power than Harvard, MIT and Princeton put together, according to the Globe.