Friday Free for All!
Its open topic time here. A few interesting stories I’ve noticed this week:
-Canadians juggling record debt loads
-Whisper sweet mortgages in her ear
-Riverview could house 30,000
-IMF: Canadas banks face more trouble
-Bernanke: Economic outlook has worsened
-Homes in bubble regions still wildly over-valued
-30% of recent us buyers have negative equity
-Florida bank blacklists 191 condo developments
What are you seeing out there? Post your news, links and anecdotes here!
note: my recent work on the blog may have disrupted some user accounts. If you’re having trouble logging in please try re-registering. You can still take part in the blog discussion without registering if you prefer.
February 18th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/russell/russell…
February 18th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
PHN is a reputable fund. Might have to jump "ships".
Interesting info. Thanks!
February 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Down with mutual funds and high MER.
ETF is the way to go. In fact, the short ETF has been a lot of fun the last couple months. You can check out SKF, SRS, FXP on US market.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Mohican I agree. They have an Overseas Equity fund and a U.S. fund which're pretty good, he could do 80% balanced, 10% overseas and 10% U.S. and then when the Canadian Market hits bottom switch some into the PHN Dividend income fund too.
Jay, If you are just starting with one single global fund, take a look a:
Mac Cundill Value Fund
Some sites worth using for research include:
http://www.morningstar.ca
http://www.globefund.ca
http://www.stockhouse.ca
February 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Mohican,
Any advice on "good global funds".
-J
February 18th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
TD has some good index fund offerings. Their e-series has particularly low fees and they offer pre-constructed portfolios for people at different risk tolerance levels.
CIBC also has a low-fee balanced index fund.
The PH&N fund is really good. The only issue I see with that fund is the underexposure to global markets but one could shore that up with a couple good global funds.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Mold City, I was doing index funds too, but figured pPillips Hager North are the way to go. They have a Balanced fund which is a Morningstar Fund Pick and has an MER of .88 (versus 2% for comparable funds at RBC).
You need $25,000 to open an account with them, or you can pay a financial planner an extra .5% with $5,000 down.
Here's the opening paragraph from the morningstar.ca article
"
Low costs and an excellent team of managers make this fund a top pick.
Even with the overabundance of balanced offerings, there are still only a handful of names that we would consider worthy of owning, and PH&N Balanced is definitely one of them. With rock-bottom fees and an excellent management team that attempts to add value with all facets of the port"
http://www.morningstar.ca/globalhome/quicktakes/f…
The market is volatile so a balanced fund with really low fees and a consistent track record could be a good move right now.
There are other Vancouver Brokerages, which are highly rated with lower MER than the bank funds.
Leith Wheeler is another one, and another one that I wouldn't personally use but is very popular is Cannacord.
If you like real estate the Dynamic real estate fund is a good one. It has a 2.58% MER though…..
February 18th, 2008 at 11:11 am
A much more alarming statistic is that it is at 1/3 of what it was in 1990.
Damn! Is that true? Some of them must have had their networth thrashed in a crash like that. Does Japan have an old age pension to support their older citizens?
What are people doing with their RRSP contributions this year? I have a feeling we're going to be in for a rough ride in the markets, so is it a good time to be buying equities or index funds? I'm paying too much for MER on mutual funds and trying to pay closer attention to this stuff, so I started a topic in the forum to ask for ideas on this:
http://vancouvercondo.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=…
February 18th, 2008 at 11:05 am
patriotz: details on what 10% down meant was never specified. Listen for what it's worth; inklings of anything negative in the MSM, regardless of the exact number, is maveric IMO.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Sure. Nominal price is simply the price in dollars. Real price is this price adjusted for inflation to some base date. The consumer price index is almost always used for this (real = nominal/CPI). That's just a convention, there is nothing magical about CPI.
Analysts (unnamed in the commentary) are apparently muttering of a 10% drop in Canadian prices this year.
What price? Median or average? It matters, because BC and Alberta RE is so expensive compared to the rest of the country. A correction to fundamentals in the West could drop the national average a lot all by itself.
But a 10% drop in the Canadian median would have to mean a significant drop in the non-bubble areas where most Canadians live.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Forgive the ignorant question, but can somebody please explain what the difference is between nominal and real prices?
February 18th, 2008 at 9:52 am
A bearish commentary (Real Audio file!!!) on CBC's Biznet this morning. Analysts (unnamed in the commentary) are apparently muttering of a 10% drop in Canadian prices this year. This is one of the first openly and extremely bearish predictions of future and imminent Canadian RE troubles.