Don’t let bad habits undermine your portfolio + MORE Jul 10th

Today, I’m making a couple of changes to the list of stocks I follow. First off, Yahoo, which I had not been trading for some time given the M&A speculation involved but also the lack of activity. In the end, Yahoo’s purchase by Verizon (VZ) did go through and Yahoo is no longer listed.
On a brighter side, Blue Apron (APRN) recently went through its IPO. It’s fair to say its timing was bad. To give you context, Blue Apron is a meal delivery service where customers sign up, choose what they’d like to eat and then receive everything necessary to make the meal shipped at home. It’s a business that requires scale but the bigger issue is that potential competitors such as Amazon would have a big leg up in such a business. AMZN is able to ship cheaper than anyone thanks to its efficient warehouses and shipping network. There had been hints that AMZN was interested in the food business because of its testing with Amazon Fresh among other initiatives. But just days before APRN started trading, Amazon announced its intention to buy Whole Foods which in many ways could set it on a path to compete, put pressure on Blue Apron…

Randy Foster
AGE: 60
PLACE: Chatham, Ont.
TFSA TOTAL: $81,555
STRATEGY: Mostly banks and financials with some energy stocks

Me and my TFSA
Randy Foster is 60 and happily retired in Chatham, Ont. In fact, he retired at the young age of 49 on full pension after 30 years of working as a group leader in the materials/logistics department of Navistar International, a trucking company. He has been investing in his TFSA since 2010. “We had just had the huge financial collapse and recession was following,” says Foster. “So stocks were way down.” He seized on the low prices and bought shares in the Bank of Nova Scotia and within a year he doubled his money.
From that moment on Randy was hooked on financials and over the years he’s added to his portfolio. In 2010 he used his $5,500 in annual contribution room to buy Bank of Montreal stock and in 2011 he bought shares in CIBC. In 2012 he bought Emera and shortly after that he transferred his Power Financial Corp…

Every time speculators get cold feet about equities, people flock to gold as a safe-haven investment. For the week ending Friday, July 7, 2017, markets were thrown for a loop. A large-scale tech stock selloff on the NASDAQ precipitated fears that Wall Street is on the decline. Pundits were saying that years of strong gains must certainly culminate in a market correction, or a dramatic long-term reversal.
The bulls will invariably run out of steam, and the bears will come out to maul markets – they say. But these naysayers are ill advised. The financial markets are not beholden to anyone, let alone speculative sentiment. Sure, a jolt hear or there will upset current trends but ultimately, it’s macroeconomic factors that determine what rises and what falls.
Tech Selloff a Blip on the Radar
Recently, the NASDAQ threw traders for a loop. A major selloff of tech stocks took place before the US Department of Labor released the June NFP data. And what a surprise it was: 220,000+ new jobs were added in the month – welcome news for stakeholders on Wall Street and abroad…

At the mid-year mark, the Canadian large cap benchmark TSX is essentially flat year to date. Given Canadians knack for keeping their investments close to home I wouldn’t be surprised if many domestic investors returns are just as flat.
That’s a problem. The best pension plans in the country wouldn’t dream of being so patriotic. If anything, they’d likely see it as borderline reckless. Why? Canada represents only a little over 3% of the world’s stock market capitalization, yet for some reason we feel content to invest in this small pool and ignore the rest of the world.
Shop the world
Think of it this way: let’s say there is a sale on at your favourite store. For argument sake, let’s say each aisle had many of the same sorts of goods, but in different quantities. Some may have more electronics while others may have more lumber, and so on. But despite knowing there are sales throughout the store, you continue to shop in a single aisle, knowingly overpaying for items that might be on sale in the next row…

European stock markets open higher, Asia stocks rally; oil inches higher