With everything going on right now around the word, its not an easy thing to decide to invest the hard earned money. It seem to me that people of my generation have everything harder and at a higher price. It take one real hunger just to make things happen. But I haven't been done too bad despite it all. The successes, big or small, contribute at making the road a bit more likely to be somewhat acceptable. When you had been investing for many years in a row, and that a big part of your life is just about following the stock market, it make it barely impossible to get away from it. Investing is about the only thing that keep me going. Its what I like to do. I however find it hard to understand where the world is hitting next in all this madness. We are dealing with so many problems. Can the stock market really overcome and be in the profit zone anyway? I personally think so, because capitalist run the world and not terrorist. It come at a high price, with a lot of unknown and volatility in the air.
I am very disappointed by Donald Trump. The man is a complete idiot. I felt devastated when Trump refused to handshake Angela Merkel at the White House. It was very heart breaking to watch, her begging him in front of the cameras to exchange an handshake. For me, that was my breaking point. What an horrible man with so poor manners toward one of top notch woman in modern politic! But with recent terrorist attack, Donald Trump reached a complete new level of idiocy. I got pretty shake up by Trump comments over London mayor. So harsh, so mean and so out of context. Now Donald Trump is getting a very bad reputation and I doubt he'll ever get over it. He's showing signs of very poor judgement and I just really dislike him being on Twitter so much. Poor stupid old man. And poor Americans. And poor us.
Despite it all, I decided today to invest in WSP Global Inc. (WSP). With all of the good stocks I hold inside my portfolio, finding WSP on Stockopedia was a blessing. With all of the great stocks that I already hold in my collection, you can imagine, its only getting harder and harder to find a new jewels. But the stock market is all full of surprises, you never know what can come on your way.
I invest it WSP inside my non-registered portfolio. I still have left $5 500 available in cash inside my TFSA to invest, and I also have a couple of thousands inside my RRSP waiting to jump back in the market. For my RRSP, I am thinking of investing some money in CGI Inc. (GIB.A). Its unfortunate, but GIB.A doesn't pay any dividend.
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6 comments:
I think anyone not largely invested in the US or mainly focused on stock screening tools would be leaving a lot of money on the table.
My own portfolio is up 22% since January, and I'm very far from being brilliant. In this bull market, everything feels smart. The mutual funds I have with an advisor, boring world-diversified things with something like 50% fixed income, are up 10% since January. I need to get rid of those.
Canada is just 0.5% of the world economy, it's not where the money is happening. It's happening in US, and it's always been happening there; S&P 500 on average up 10%.
That said, there were a lot of success that you can't find based on technicals, instead of following headlines. For example, Canadian Goose, an obvious stock to get into, knowing that people buy luxury items in both good time and in bad times. Well off people around you wear Canadian Goose, and their prices are going up. It's up 42% on that stock, in a few months (bought at the IPO). I'm up 165% on Shopify, a company in Toronto that drives the online stores of well-known companies, like Tesla. These are not secret companies, they are well known and in the financial headlines. Tons of other things are up, boring things like Manulife are up 30%.
Stock screener are a tool, but it's a tool that nobody to make real money. What matters is what is actually going on in the market, and there is a lot that we do know.
For example, everyone knew last year that Apple will release their 10th anniversary iPhone and that it would cause the stock to go up until then. It was obvious that the stock was cheap last year and that the company was stable, and that a drop was buying opportunity. Is Facebook, Amazon at risk of shrinking instead of growing? No it isn't. We know this.
Mining stocks? We cannot know where the price of gold is going and how long it will take to get there. Developing mines, we don't know if they will ever produce, it's gambling, not investing. Bank stock? We know they are linked to the interest rates in the US and de-regulation which are now delayed so these stocks are down.
The moves in BRK.B can look random, but they are linked to what the market thinks of Wells Fargo (a bank) or Coke, in which they are invested. If you follow those, you can then know when it is best to buy BRK.B, when it is beaten down. Otherwise you're just looking at the past performance and probably buying at the wrong time and leaving money on the table.
Good for you if you make that much on your stocks.
But what offer Stockopedia are tools to help investors. Like those screens that I talk about many times, well, they have categories of them, like momentum screens, dividend screens, all kind of screens. And those are tools to help investors pick what suit best for them. Its not something to look down at. I made very good picks using Stockopedia screens.
I am not that much interest in US stocks. I find we have everything in need on the Canadian stock markets.
Past performance are not a proof of future performances but chances are that stocks that perform well in the past, that have exceed their before 2008 crash value, are more likely to do well in the future.
After investing in stocks for couple of years, I can see clearly now where I am going and I know myself now. I am not a good speculator. I am more an investor than a trader or a speculator. But that's being for me. You may turn out to be a very good trader, that's good for you, but I cannot switch of role, its not in my nature. I am now turning into long time value and I am looking now more than ever before to invest in stocks that have a good history of their own.
Past results cannot promise good result, but I base myself on that principle to minimize risk and to get to know what I am holding to.
just so you know.. Canadian Goose is up 250% since my post above (300% since IPO), and Shopify almost doubled.
To put that in perspective, put in 2,000$ in goose in June 2017 after reading that post and it's worth about 7,000$ in June 2018. For Shopify, that 2000$ would be worth about 3,800$
For the US stocks, I think it's really leaving money on the table to not simply have expressed in stocks the position that the S&P was going to grow under Trump.
If you had bought the SPY ETF, which means not putting much thoughts and research into stock picking and just riding the market, it's up 15% since that post, June 2017.
But that's not all.
If you had bought any US stock, even if that stock's performance was zero the USD has been going up against CAD, so you're still up ahead. All your Canadian assets have lost value since last year, and will continue to do so as the US puts more pressure on trade and protectionism and the canadian dollar goes down.
There is an ad on TV that says "you're richer than you think!" Well, if you have all your assets in Canadian dollar and on the TSX, you're actually poorer than you think. You've got inflation and dollar devaluation eating all the profit you think you've made on paper.
I have no interest in Canada Goose, I find their coats ugly and too expensive to what it is. The company is having its momentum, that's all. Shopify is not my thing either. I only invest in stocks that I like.
The part "All your Canadian assets have lost value since last year" is making me laugh, since I am at my highest value ever, and my stocks are performing really well.
One should not laugh at the "assets have lost value".
The problem is dollar amounts in your account does not represent a constant value, like if it were a bar of gold. If 15 years ago you had 200,000$ in a bank account, the purchasing power of that 200k is now worth half of that 15 years later, around 95,000$.
The goal of investing is over-performing the speed of the lost of value of the money. If we simply made 3%, we're screwed, we're just breaking even even if your account said we made a hundred thousand. This is exactly why I'm managing my portfolio and not leaving it to mutual funds.
Let's say you're saving for retirement and you start at 20 year and plan to save 200,000$ by age 60. That's all fine, except that by the time you get to 60, you will need 800,000$, because it's 40 years later.
Do you think a house in the country that one bought for 20,000$ that is now worth 140,000$ 25 years later has really gained 7 times the value? It has not. It has gotten older and needs repair and the land is the same. What's changed is value of the money, i.e. how much you can get for a dollar.
Some people think it is "inflation" which is understood to be cost of living or "things getting more expensive because store raise prices" but that is an over-simplified metrics used by the government to index pensions. The actual phenomenon iscalled monetary dilution and it's caused by new dollars being created ever seconds by the credit system (banks loaning money).
If you have no exposure to the world's reserve currency -- the USD -- you get slammed by both dilution within CAD and devaluation against USD. Also the canadian companies you invest in pay more taxes and make less money.
Btw, it's not super important if don't like Goose coats or shoppify. The point is that these luxury goods and online shopping are two key markets, plus they have international exposure, and we only care if the company makes money for us. I bet you didn't look closely at the products the other stocks in your portfolio make or said "I don't invest in CNR because trains are ugly". That's not how anyone invests. The luxury market performs well in a down market and goose has a growth setup in china, that's why we invest it.
You are so annoying and not interesting at all!
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