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by ghariton
09 Feb 2024 13:20
Forum: Taxing Situations
Topic: Major tax mistakes. Could use some general advice.
Replies: 31
Views: 1938

Re: Major tax mistakes. Could use some general advice.

CRA seems to rarely ask for support for ACB values. But your case is a bit different since you are filing past due returns. They may be more “interested” depending on the size of trades. None-the- less, I expect they will be reasonable. I suspect CRA will be more willing to accept these estimates if the returns are prepared by an accountant rather than an individual, especially one who hasn't filed taxes in several years. Not only does an accountant have the needed knowledge and skills but they're also ethically bound by their professional society. That's another reason to follow @beachcomber's advice upthread. If you're going to go down that road, you might want a tax lawyer, rather than a tax accountant. The difference is that a tax lawy...
by ghariton
09 Feb 2024 13:08
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: BCE (Symbol-BCE)
Replies: 1858
Views: 286258

Re: BCE (Symbol-BCE)

I think that consideration should go beyond BCE and include the entire telecommunications sector. What is the future for mobile? We know that usage is still increasing, but are we on the top part of the S-curve, or still on the steeply rising part? With young people on their phones for ten hours a day, what are the possibilities for intrinsic growth, i.e. from existing users? Extrinsic growth, i.e. from people who have not yet acquired smart phones? Competition from Videotron heating up? The second piece is wireline broadband. Do people really need these faster speeds, and is there a tapering off of the demand for more? There is demand for decreased latency, but are the wireline networks moving in that direction? Will the value proposition ...
by ghariton
08 Feb 2024 21:00
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: BCE (Symbol-BCE)
Replies: 1858
Views: 286258

Re: BCE (Symbol-BCE)

AltaRed wrote: 08 Feb 2024 14:54 The 14 year trend in EPS is pretty pathetic. How BCE could justify dividend growth over this period defies mathematics, and yet a number of companies, not just BCE, are doing just that. One has to start wondering what the longer term future is.
Indeed.

I last held BCE stock some twenty-five years ago.

Added: I estimate current dividend yield at about 7.6%. Shouldn't the dividend growth investors be buying?

George
by ghariton
08 Feb 2024 20:53
Forum: Taxing Situations
Topic: Major tax mistakes. Could use some general advice.
Replies: 31
Views: 1938

Re: Major tax mistakes. Could use some general advice.

AltaRed wrote: 08 Feb 2024 16:44 It is a relatively common problem with Executors settling estates where the deceased never kept good, if any, records of the cost basis of their holdings and so Executors can only make 'reasonable efforts' to estimate this data. CRA knows such events occur and it is my understanding CRA will be receptive to 'reasonable efforts' to estimate cost basis.
Yes, that has been my experience.

George
by ghariton
07 Feb 2024 18:42
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: How long should your bond ladder be now?
Replies: 10
Views: 1146

Re: How long should your bond ladder be now?

marcharry wrote: 07 Feb 2024 17:50 the real secret sauce of classic, passive DIY is the moral fortitude to 'just do it'.
Yes indeed. All else is commentary.

George
by ghariton
05 Feb 2024 23:00
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Retirees and the market
Replies: 30
Views: 2289

Re: Retirees and the market

More semantic difficulties with the article: as people approach and move past retirement age, risk aversion should be falling, and risky assets converted into safe and well-diversified portfolio Ummm... when risk aversion is falling, the investor should be shifting to more risky assets, not less risky ones. Actually, in my case (sample of one), risk aversion is indeed falling as I age. I have seen this movie before and know that it doesn't end all that badly. I just don't understand the standard justification for risk aversion increasing with age, i.e. that we have less time to recover from a bear market. As we get older, our planning horizons get shorter and long term recoveries don't matter all that much. What matters is how we will get t...
by ghariton
01 Feb 2024 20:54
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Frothy Equity Markets
Replies: 1395
Views: 155882

Re: Frothy Equity Markets

Nvidia reports after market close: Nvidia (NVDA) reported third-quarter results crushed Wall Street expectations. The chipmaker reported adjusted earnings of $4.02 per share, well above the expected $3.36. The $18.12 billion in revenue was better than the $16.09 billion estimate. Revenue is up 206% from a year ago. However CFO Colette Kress cautioned that restrictions on AI chip exports to China could mean sales in the country "will decline significantly in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024," though the company believes "the decline will be more than offset by strong growth in other regions." That's very, very good. Nvidia stock popped after hours, right? Down -1.74% after hours. This is why I'm not a stock picker. Geor...
by ghariton
01 Feb 2024 20:31
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Frothy Equity Markets
Replies: 1395
Views: 155882

Re: Frothy Equity Markets

Frothy indeed. Just yesterday, my total portfolio (including fixed income) was down 2.5%. Today, it was up 0.8%. I suspect that the volatility is exacerbated by a fairly big holding of QQQ, about 22% of total portfolio. It didn't start that way, but that's what buy-and-hold does to you (I've held since 2004.). Too late to sell, price is eleven times ACB and I don't want to pay all that tax. I guess that QQQ is now my play money. (I lost all $25,000 of my "real" play money and I'm out of that game.) Even if QQQ goes to zero, it wouldn't affect our lifestyle. So I'm just here for the cheap thrills. But what a ride. Five of the "magnificent seven" reported this week, and all of them beat estimated revenues and earnings. So ...
by ghariton
31 Jan 2024 13:14
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

New paper finds that Trump's protectionist tariffs did not help the U.S. economy, but did help the Republican party. NBER, which allows three free papers yearly . Here is the abstract: We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The trade-war has not to date provided economic help to the US heartland: import tariffs on foreign goods neither raised nor lowered US employment in newly-protected sectors; retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts, primarily in agriculture; and these harms...
by ghariton
30 Jan 2024 17:06
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

When I worked at Bell Canada, Excel had become widespread -- and so had errors. Like summing the contents of a row and adding in the year that the row represented. It got so bad that I prohibited the use of spreadsheets in my group. The prohibition lasted about a month.

FWIW when I need a program for my work (as opposed to entertainment) I always use something like C++, even for very simple programs. That way I can catch errors more easily.

George
by ghariton
24 Jan 2024 22:55
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

43% of banking systems in the U.S. are built on COBOL. Who will maintain them as programmers retire?

George
by ghariton
21 Jan 2024 15:28
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

MEV’s are certainly getting a “bumpy” reception these days. Keep in mind the source though. WSJ will generally be anti Biden given their ownership. Is there any doubt that eventually EV’s will replace ICE’s? I would say not. It’s only the timing and implementation that’s debateable. Yes, my quote was from an editorial in the WSJ. But the news pages, which are generally unbiased, are telling a similar story. I have no doubt that EVs will eventually replace ICEs. However, for investors in EVs, timing matters -- a lot. By extension, it also matter for projects to produce lithium batteries. Meanwhile, some 8% of new cars sold in the U.S. are EVs. The good news is that, in China, over a quarter of new cars are EVs. The bad news for investors is...
by ghariton
20 Jan 2024 23:14
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

More on the popularity of EVs from the WSJ : The Biden Administration keeps throwing around billions in subsidies for electric vehicles, and the press corps keeps hailing them, but consumers don’t seem to want them. The evidence is building that this green industrial policy is a bust. Ford Motor said on Friday that it’s slashing production of its F-150 Lightning truck amid flagging demand. ... It sold a mere 24,165 Lightnings last year and lost roughly $36,000 on each EV in the third quarter. <snip> Or consider General Motors, which last month told its Chevrolet dealers to stop selling its electric Blazer SUV owing to software and other problems. ... A Consumer Reports survey in November found that new EVs have 79% more problems than intern...
by ghariton
20 Jan 2024 15:44
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?
Replies: 38
Views: 2255

Re: Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?

Interesting discussions. Many creative solutions out there. Nobody mentioned annuitization, although other threads have discussed it in this context. It seems to me that the consequences of cognitive decline are best dealt with simplification and perhaps annuitization, followed by the appointment of a POA for financial affairs. (A POA for health concerns is a good idea too.) Cognitive decline affects not only investment decisions, but also things like paying bills and income taxes, making withdrawals in a timely manner, and generally the spending side of financial management. The financial advisers I have met don't do management of spending, so they are an incomplete solution. So rather than a financial adviser, as Mr. Carrick recommends, i...
by ghariton
19 Jan 2024 23:31
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?
Replies: 38
Views: 2255

Re: Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?

AltaRed wrote: 19 Jan 2024 22:05 I agree except to the extent someone with increasingly diminished cognitive capacity can do just as much damage to a simple 1 ETF portfolio as any other kind of portfolio. It is the risk of irrational behaviour being able to even access the portfolio that could destroy it.
Limit the access to on line only, and put in a strong password. My experience is that memory for things like passwords is the first thing to go. At that point, when the person can no longer pay his or her bills because of a lack of cash, have the POA kick in.

My chief complaint with Carrick's article is that he treats all investors the same way. We all should use financial advisers, according to him. Perhaps some should. But everyone?

George
by ghariton
19 Jan 2024 21:49
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?
Replies: 38
Views: 2255

Turn over your DIY to an adviser when you retire?

Rob Carrick has this advice for investors: A warning to people planning to take over their own investments in retirement. <snip> My suggestion: Don’t do it. Mr. Carrick's point is that, as we age, we lose our capacity to manage our own money. At that point, we might find it too difficult to find an adviser and switch our money to him or her. He seems to be talking about people who are 80 years old. I agree that cognitive ability, including managing money, declines with age for most people. (But see Charlie Munger.) It seems to me that the rational response is to dramatically simplify your portfolio, a solution adopted by many on this forum. With the creation of funds like VBAL, money management is as easy as operating a credit card. I susp...
by ghariton
19 Jan 2024 15:45
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree
Replies: 204
Views: 30876

Re: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree

My theory is that pre-2000 few people want to have anything to do with RRBs because they could make 20% to 40% a year in Internet stocks. That was certainly part of it, as Norbert pointed out many years ago. But if so, this should have affected all non-Internet, or non-ICT stocks. And yet RRBs were somehow special. It helped that interest rates declined for the two decades after 2000, and indeed since interest rates flattened out and rose a bit recently, RRBs did relatively badly. But still, that can't be all of the story. One of the puzzles, that I flagged several times in the RRB thread, was that the real return on comparable nominal bonds, using any reasonable estimate of anticipated inflation, was lower than the real return on RRBs. So...
by ghariton
19 Jan 2024 15:06
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: BCE (Symbol-BCE)
Replies: 1858
Views: 286258

Re: BCE (Symbol-BCE)

Seems to me that mobile services are the mainstay of BCE earnings. Landline, including broadband over fiber, are an interesting experiment, but we still don't know whether they will pay back all that investment in fiber networks, let alone support a high dividend stream. Other portions of the business, such as media, are losers and have always been so (ever since Jean Monty bought CTV in 2000).

But the Rogers-Shaw deal has seen Shaw's mobility business sold to Videotron. Pierre Karl Peladeau is an aggressive businessman, and I expect competition to intensify, not just in Quebec, but right across the country's big cities. So that will put pressure on Bell's mobile segment. If so, where will the dividend increases come from?

George
by ghariton
18 Jan 2024 16:51
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Clippings 2024
Replies: 129
Views: 10330

Re: Clippings 2024

SQRT wrote: 17 Jan 2024 10:33 B
Certainly agree that the retail investment business is much much more consumer friendly today than it was 40 years ago. Sometimes you wouldn’t know it around here given all the (mostly justified) complaints.
Agree with both parts of the statement.

O was a client of Canada Trust before the takeover/merger, and they had excellent service. Service dropped after the takeover, but has struggled back up. Just my impressions, of course.

George
by ghariton
17 Jan 2024 22:44
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Is my financial plan reasonable?
Replies: 29
Views: 1740

Re: Is my financial plan reasonable?

AltaRed wrote: 17 Jan 2024 17:18 my Instructions to POA/Executor. Sell it before the body is cold.
I doubt that your Executor could legally do that.

I'm sticking with U.S.-domiciled ETFs. The MERs are low, the liquidity is great, I have very significant uncrystalized capital gains in taxable accounts, and holding the same ETFs in the registered accounts makes life simple, e.g. RRIF withdrawals in kind.

I seriously doubt that I will have enough at death to incur any U.S. estate taxes. People on this forum must be much richer than I am. As to reporting to U.S. authorities, that's what tax accountants are for. (I would not settle any but the smallest estate without the services of a tax accountant.)

George
by ghariton
17 Jan 2024 20:44
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree
Replies: 204
Views: 30876

Re: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree

Norbert Schlenker wrote: 17 Jan 2024 18:20 You knew - and we all knew - by 2005 that your fulsome RRB bet had paid off.
Yes. Although I still haven't figured out why. The investment was meant to be purely defensive -- a preservation of capital.

George
by ghariton
16 Jan 2024 20:06
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree
Replies: 204
Views: 30876

Re: The Plight of the Y2K Retiree

Thanks, Norbert.

I guess I'll make it.

George
by ghariton
16 Jan 2024 13:20
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Inflation
Replies: 1010
Views: 155677

Re: Inflation

In other words, inflation was essentially stable in December.

Interest rate reductions pushed out a bit. Markets a bit disappointed. Not much to see here folks.

George
by ghariton
15 Jan 2024 15:43
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Is my financial plan reasonable?
Replies: 29
Views: 1740

Re: Is my financial plan reasonable?

Welcome to FWF. I agree with paying down your mortgage as a top priority, for the reasons others have given. I think that, at your age, a 3 month cash reserve for emergencies is sufficient. You are unlikely to face any major health crises, the most common reason why bigger reserves may be necessary. With your DB building, I agree that 100% equities is a reasonable allocation. The one caveat is your tolerance for volatility. You will see some significant drops along the way, and will have to not panic or otherwise sell low, only to buy back high. As far as the allocation of the equities are concerned, I agree with a large allocation outside of Canada. The Canadian market is simply too narrow for sufficient diversification. (I personally hold...
by ghariton
14 Jan 2024 23:26
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Portfolio Construction Based on Rational Reminder #284 w/Scott Cederburg
Replies: 49
Views: 3197

Re: Portfolio Construction Based on Rational Reminder #284 w/Scott Cederburg

Finally found my old copy of Dimson, March and Staunton. A quick and dirty calculation. (All returns are real returns.) For the decade 1970 to 1979 Canadian equities 2.4% Canadian bonds -1.6% 60/40 weighted average 0.8% Had the investor taken my oft-repeated advice and diversified globally, the returns for 1970 to 1979 would have been World equities 0.9% Canadian bonds -1.6% 60/40 weighted average -0.1% So it was an unpleasant decade over all, but according to this calculation, a 100% equity portfolio, Canadian or world, would have beaten a 60/40 portfolio. If you look at the twenty-year period 1970 to 1989, the numbers would have been different but the directional results would have been the same Canadian equities 3.9% World equities 7.0% ...