Royal Bank of Canada Lifts Dividend With Jump in Quarterly Earnings – The Wall Street Journal + MORE Dec 3rd

Royal Bank of Canada Lifts Dividend With Jump in Quarterly Earnings  The Wall Street JournalRBC hikes profitability target after posting 29% jump in fourth-quarter earnings  The Globe and MailRBC CEO warns of economic uncertainty as bank profit beats expectations  Financial PostROYAL BANK OF CANADA REPORTS FOURTH QUARTER AND 2025 RESULTS  Newswire CanadaRBC posts record Q4 profit but CEO raises concerns about uneven economic recovery  Toronto Star

Welcome to the Canadian Crypto Observer. Financial journalist and author Aditya Nain offers perspective on market-moving headlines to help Canadian investors navigate the cryptocurrency market.

If you follow the crypto market, you’ve probably heard that cryptocurrency prices fell through the floor over recently. In October and November, Bitcoin (BTC) crashed from a peak of about $124,000 to a trough of about $80,000 (all figures in US dollar unless otherwise specified). That’s a worrying fall of about 35% in a matter of weeks, driven to a great extent by lower expectations of further rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve (The Fed). 

Nonetheless, BTC has recovered slightly and is trading at about $87,000 at the time of writing this column. Before we begin to pronounce the death of BTC and other cryptocurrencies, it would help to put things into perspective by looking at BTC’s performance as an asset over the past five years—especially in comparison with other popular assets…

If you work for an employer with a defined benefit (DB) pension plan, you may be eligible to buy back service. This means you can pay for periods during which you did not contribute as if you were a member of the plan during those years. This will increase your future pension entitlement.

A common situation is when you were on leave, including maternity or parental leave. Another example might be if you transfer from one DB pension to another when you start a new job, and the new pension has a more lucrative pension formula.

Funding a buyback

When you buy back service, you can use money that is in your registered retirement savings plan (RRSP). This is not considered an RRSP withdrawal. The funds can be transferred on a tax-deferred basis to the pension and boost your future payments in exchange for giving up some of your RRSP savings. 

Although you could use money in a tax-free savings account (TFSA) or from another source if your RRSP was insufficient, this could be subject to a limit…