Canadians are using their appreciating homes as ATMs (as Americans did in the early 2000′s before their housing crash) and the funds being borrowed are not just for home improvements, but in many cases to fund living and lifestyle expenses.
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Investing Need Not Be A “Risky Business” – Here’s How to Lower Risk in Your Portfolio
Asset allocation is the most essential factor in building a high performing portfolio. Paying attention to the risk of each asset class allows you to create a portfolio that can beat the market in good times as well as bad.
Read More »Currency Wars: Here’s What They’re Really All About
A currency war is a battle, supposedly an economic policy to cheapen a country's currency compared to that of others, to promote exports but the real reason, the one that’s less talked about, is that countries actually want to import inflation - a way of creating monetary ease and importing inflation. Let me explain.
Read More »Financially Most Americans Are Totally Unprepared – What About You? (+2K Views)
It's up to the concerned and critical-thinking among us to look at the math, the hard data underlying the headlines, and construct what we can best calculate to be true about our current personal financial level of (un)readiness for the future and the truth is that there are 3 adult generations in the U.S. are experiencing a squeeze that is making it harder to create value, save capital, and pursue happiness than at any point since WWII. Let's walk through the numbers.
Read More »The Market Is Overvalued, Over-believed & Over-margined – Plan Now For A MAJOR Correction
With the market richly priced, forward returns just don’t look good enough. Worth the risk? I think it’s better to have a game plan in place that enables you to capitalize on the next major market correction – which in my opinion could be in the -40% to -60% range.
Read More »These 2 Charts Confirm That Stock Markets Are In “too-good-to-be-true” Territory
Stock markets around the world have been on an extended bull run for a long time now and 2 new charts, from Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, show that shares are in too-good-to-be-true territory and that, if history is anything to go by, they're due for a sharp correction.
Read More »Extreme Makeover of Markets Coming – Here’s Why (+2K Views)
Extremes eventually reverse, and generally in rough symmetry with their explosive rise and we are reaching such extremes in valuation, complacency and margin debt. When the speculative frenzy dissipates, central banks will be the only buyers left and unless the Fed increases its balance sheet from $4.5 trillion to $14.5 trillion in a matter of months, even central bank manipulation will be swamped by sellers exiting bursting-bubble markets.
Read More »Be Careful! Former Investment "Rules" Nolonger Work – Here’s Why
Investment “rules” that were relevant for a century are obsolete. They were based on a world where economies grew, people’s standard of living increased and outcomes tomorrow better than today. Arguably each of these conditions will not hold in the future but if they don't, neither do the rules of thumb that guided investing last century. These guiding principles developed and worked in a world that that no longer exists but applying them in the future will result in devastating financial outcomes. [Let me explain.] Words: 1261
Read More »The Canadian Housing Bubble Will NEVER Blow Up – Supposedly! Here’s Why
The Canadian housing bubble will never blow up. There’s simply too much “plankton” in the water. It keeps the “food chain” healthy and offers ample nourishment for the “big wales and sharks” and shorting the Canadian housing bubble is useless. Here's why.
Read More »Canadian Households Extremely Vulnerable to Changes in Economy
In 1990, Canadians owed 85 cents for every dollar of annual disposable income. Today that number has grown to a record $1.63. Meanwhile, Canadians are saving just 3.6% of their incomes today – a drop from 12% in 1990. Rising household debt levels have some sounding the alarm.
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