(Freeimages.com / Rober Owen-Wahl)
 
I have a few hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds in my RRSP at a large investment firm. I want to move this money into a self-directed RRSP at an online brokerage. Can they charge me a fee for taking my money elsewhere? If so, is it normal for the brokerage receiving the new money to reimburse these charges? – Bill
Just about every investment dealer charges fees to transfer registered accounts, such as RRSPs and TFSAs. The typical fee is $135 to $150, plus taxes, per account.
Since you’re a departing client, the firm has no real incentive to make you happy, so it is unlikely you’ll be able to negotiate on these fees. The good news is that many brokerages will reimburse these fees when you open a new account and transfer a significant amount of money. But do your research beforehand, because every brokerage has a different policy, it may not be consistent, and they may not advertise it openly.
Bill, the fact that you have a six-figure sum to transfer puts you in a good position…

This morning, I will be closing one of the 4 live trades that I currently have on, the one where I went long Paypal (PYPL) vs. Short IAC Interactive (IAC). I continue to be a strong believer in Paypal and you can expect me to buy the stock in 2018 when I get back to trading:) As I wrote recently on SeekingAlpha, I do think Paypal has a very good opportunity to be one of the dominant payment players online which would be incredibly valuable. They are coming under attack from the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook but I do like their odds.
The 2017 returns stand at 7.71% which is not bad at all. I will be closing the trade on the open today, you can go see this year (and past years) trades here:

http://www.intelligentspeculator.net/livetrades

Q. I have a question about reporting capital gains realized in the United States as a Canadian citizen. When I was younger, I received some certificated shares of DE (NYSE) in a trust account as a gift. The shares have since split 2-1, and I sold all shares online this year. On the trading platform (Computershare), there is no Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) for the shares listed. My questions are:
1) How do I calculate the ACB for these shares?
2) As a Canadian, how do I report the capital gain on my taxes next year? Do I need to file with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or can I only file with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)?
Thank-you for the question, Ben
A. The Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) of the shares, which is a calculation used to determine the cost of an investment for tax purposes, is their fair market value at the time you acquired them. You can find historical pricing online for almost any stock that is still listed.  If the stock was acquired before 1972, the ACB will be the value on December 22, 1971…

Canada finally dips below key threshold. Plus, what to expect from the Bank of Canada this week

Activist hedge fund wants Hudson’s Bay to sell or convert stores to alternate uses and transform itself into a real estate play

Taxing endowments’ investment income would help higher ed.

TORONTO _ Canada’s largest licensed marijuana producer reported a $1.3-million loss in its latest quarter despite doubling its revenue compared with a year ago, sending its shares lower in Tuesday trading.
However, Canopy Growth Corp.’s (TSX:WEED) chief executive Bruce Linton told analysts on its earnings call that the company is “driving ahead,” pointing to 27 provisional patents filed through its subsidiary Canopy Health Innovations and several international deals, such as strategic partnerships in Denmark and Jamaica.
“The international opportunities are now increasingly happening,” Linton said.
Canopy shares slipped two per cent in Toronto in afternoon trading to $20.02, as its latest results fell short of analyst expectations.
The Smiths Falls, Ont.-based company said Tuesday it lost $1.3 million attributable to shareholders, or a penny per share for the quarter, compared with a profit of $5.4 million, or five cents per share in the same quarter last year…

Good morning, today I will be adding one more stock the list of stocks that I follow. As a reference, this is the list of stocks that I follow news about, read earnings call transcripts of and eventually start trading for my long & short stock picks. In this case, I don’t expect to trade ROKU for a little bit as the company just went public and while it has had a promising start, I (almost!) always prefer watching from the sidelines initially as I get a better feel for the company.
Roku is a company that provides a tv stick/digital top boxes that basically provides content to users tv. It competes with the likes of Apple TV (AAPL), Fire TV (Amazon), Chromecast (GOOG) and provides a platform for content companies such as Netflix, Google’s Youtube and so much more. As you can imagine it is an incredibly competitive space but one that ROKU has been able to do very well in. The company has not been profitable on a EPS basis in the past few quarters which is not always a problem but I’ll be curious to see how they can turn things around in this case…

A roundup of investment ideas for active investors

Third-quarter earnings hit $1.87-billion, doubling profit of $933-million a year earlier

The Sherbrooke TimesConflict of interest: other ministers have imitated Bill MorneauThe Sherbrooke TimesThe opposition resumed its attack in the House of commons on Monday after having learned that, in addition to Bill Morneau, other ministers in the government of Justin Trudeau's assets have not been placed in a blind trust. The prime minister has …and more »

There has been a lack of updates here in recent weeks caused by a very busy schedule more than anything else, very sorry about that. I did want to give an update on a change in the list of stocks that I follow.
Removing WebMD (WMBD): I had not traded WBMD in a long time mostly because there was so much speculation that it would eventually be taken over and that is exactly what ended up happening, the stock is no longer listed after private equity firm KKR ended up buying the company in a $2.8B deal.
Adding GoDaddy (GDDY): Godaddy is a domain registrar and web hosting company more known for its Super Bowl ads and its publicity stunts than anything else and while it has been a publicly traded company for some time (2014), I have not to this point spent much time looking at the stock so I don’t expect to start trading it in the near future or until I get a better feel for the stock. At first glance, I am surprised by GDDY’s valuation and lack of earnings. While the company has not been public for that long, it is not a new company by any standard having started operating in 1997…

Save, invest, prosper with My Own Advisor.
July 2017 Dividend Income Update Welcome to my latest dividend income update. For those of you new to these posts on my site, every month I discuss our approach to investing using Canadian dividend paying stocks.  We believe buying and holding a number of Canadian dividend paying stocks in our tax-free (thanks TFSA) and non-registered…
We’re halfway there! Saving and investing our way to a million dollar portfolio. The article July 2017 Dividend Income Update is exclusive to My Own Advisor. Make sure you check out My Own Advisor Dividends, Indexing and Deals pages to save hundreds or thousands of dollars every year. All Rights Reserved.

U.S. stocks are little changed in early trading on a holiday Monday in Canada, as technology companies are rising while energy companies slip with the price of oil.

This morning, I will be closing 2 trades that are currently beyond their stop. One winning and one losing trade:
Jan 4th: Long Tripadvisor (TRIP) vs Short Yelp (YELP):  This trade currently stands at -32.79% on the back of an incredible jump by YELP following its latest earnings and specifically its decision to sell its Eat24 business to Grubhub.

March 16th: Long Priceline (PCLN) vs Short Travelzoo (TZOO):  This one currently stands at +28,59% and its incredible how reliable of a play being long Priceline (PCLN) has been over the past couple of decades. Just stunning and I’d actually bet that will continue.

 

U.S. stocks are little changed in early trading on a holiday Monday in Canada, as technology companies are rising while energy companies slip with the price of oil.

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

It began long before the financial crisis, and it has worsened markedly in the past six years.

Source: “Excerpted from Your Money’s Worth: The Essential Guide To Financial Advice for Canadians, by Shamez Kassam, MBA, CFA. Available March onwards at Amazon.ca.”
Read our review of this book here.
Finding Your Ideal Advisor
So what is the best way to go about finding a great advisor? It can feel at first like a daunting task—there are advisors seemingly on every block. To complicate matters further, two advisors from the same company may be completely different in their approach and in the services they provide, as noted above. And depending on the amount of assets you have to invest, you may have access to only certain types of advisors. So where do you start? Generally, the best way to start seeking a great advisor is through word of mouth, keeping in mind that, similar to most professions, there are great advisors, good advisors, and advisors who may not be the best fit for you. Your goal should be to hire the right advisor for your particular needs.
I have found that people in search of an advisor often call an “expert” they heard on a local radio program…

The U.S. equity market has been up over 1%, the week of the release of the first round of the French Presidential election results. Now, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY) was up 1.49%, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (NYSEARCA: IWM) was up 1.35% and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) was up 1.87%, the week of the French Presidential election first round results. Now, this was primarily due to Macron’s slight lead, and traders and investors began to put risk back on the table. That said, safe havens have been down significantly after risk-on sentiment was back. Although traders and investors have shifted away from safe haven assets, the results of the final round of the French Presidential election on May 7, 2017 could surprise the markets, if Le Pen wins. Now, there are some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that investors might want to keep an eye on ahead in an event of a Le Pen win.
Gold-Related ETFs
The SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEARCA: GLD) was down just over 1% on the week, as of April 28, 2017…

A number of oil and gas companies reporting quarterly financial results between Thursday’s close and Friday’s open

OSC froze trading in 15 funds managed by Crystal Wealth

The company sees a further dwindling in on-demand deposits, giving it less of a financial buffer

For years I feel like I’ve been discussing the “ecosystem play” and I certainly wish I had been able to buy an ETF that held all those plays. In this 2013 post, I didn’t include Microsoft but started including it in 2014 as it became clear it would successfully adapt to this new digital world:
Making The Case For An Ecosystem Play
I’ve also argued that very few other players will manage to thrive in an environment where the ecosystem players are able to leverage their power and users and that theme clearly remains relevant. Yesterday, Google and Amazon both reported earnings and both crushed it. They are all fighting their own battles but each have their own clear strengths.
How are these 5 ecosystem plays doing now? Take a look at the largest companies by market cap as of April 26th:

Of course, once that data incorporates Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) market gains at the end of the day, the picture will be even more clear. Even Alibaba (BABA) which stands at #10 could also be included in the “ecosystem” play although it would be the Chinese one…

The election of Donald Trump was always going to mean the months ahead would be interesting. He is viewed variously in society as a businessman who would shake up the political community to a man who was a bully with little substance. He has insufficient knowledge to do the job his critics say. In his first weeks, he has already been confronted with questions about the selection of his key personnel, has backed down over healthcare despite having a republican majority in both Houses and now his financial ideas are about to be scrutinized.
Credit Issues
Credit strategists have observed contraction in bank lending; money supply has slowed and this is certain to have an impact on the economy. Already Trump has announced an increase in military spending and that will inevitably impact on the domestic budget because the Republicans certainly do not want to increase Federal spending.
The US Federal Reserve figures show that commercial and industrial loans hit their peak in December and have been falling since then…

Good Sunday morning! Tomorrow morning, I will be closing out one of the 7 live trades, as I close the Long Facebook (FB) and Short Paypal (PYPL) trade that was started on January 3rd. The trade currently stands at +21.10%. Last week I wrote a deeper dive into my thoughts about Paypal on SeekingAlpha, you can see it here:
Paypal is standing on the edge of a cliff
Facebook on the other hand has been doing tremendously well and while it continues to be under fire for a few things, I do like what I’m seeing out of Facebook and will certainly write more about it soon. There’s also a decent chance that I’ll be opening a new long & short trade with Facebook and as you know, it does remain my biggest single stock position.
As is always the case, you can see my 2017 (and past years) long & short stock picks and returns here:

http://www.intelligentspeculator.net/livetrades

Who cares the most about you? Who knows the most about you? Politicians like to smile, kiss babies and make you feel special. But, in the end, you are free to live your life and only you can build your wealth.
There is no government program that will make you great. Even, if the United States becomes great again, that might not translate to your financial portfolio. Learn why you should concentrate on making gold great again.
Gold is Great
Throughout history, the leaders of the world have tried to control gold. American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt confiscated gold when the country was in the Great Depression. China forbade ownership of gold under the communists. Why do politicians seek to control gold?
Gold is money. Gold is power. The elite are just like you, they were born of a mother. They put their pants on, one leg at a time, just like you. What is the difference between the elite and you?
The elite own gold.
While the powerful have been holding down the price of gold, they have been purchasing it behind-the-scenes…

A review announced by Canada’s top financial watchdog after revelations that employees at the five major banks routinely pressure customers into signing up for products they don’t need is unlikely to be effective, consumer advocates say.

Today I’m happy to confirm that I’m adding 2 new stocks to the list of stocks that I follow:

Snapchat Inc (SNAP)
Shopify (SHOP)

Shopify (SHOP) is a Canadian based company that has a platform making it very easy for merchants to start selling their stuff online. That means making it easier for merchants to build a website, list their items, process orders, etc. There is of course a lot of competition in the sector but it’s fair to say that SHOP has emerged as a market leader and given the fact that my web company does have items to sell (not on this blog though), I did end up going through their website quite a bit as well as look for competitors. I then spent a bit more time looking at its financials and while I doubt I’ll be trading the company anytime soon, I will start following it, listening earnings calls (or reading transcripts), etc. So you should expect some commentary in the coming months.

Snapchat (SNAP) is a fascinating company. If you exclude Uber and Airbnb, it is the one company I was most looking forward to turning public…

SAIT partners with Calgary’s Centre for Newcomers to teach financial and taxation courses specific to Canada

Users can pay for everything from Uber to this Bengaluru autorickshaw using Paytm (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty)
The floor is shaking in this sun-drenched, airy downtown Toronto office. Blame that on the two young men, one in shorts and a soccer jersey, thudding around the ping-pong table just off the centre of the room.
About 50 engineers, developers and data scientists—one of whom formerly worked at CERN, the European research facility which discovered the Higgs Boson particle—work in this two-story brick building in the Entertainment District. Their employer is not a buzzy homegrown startup or the Canadian branch plant of a Silicon Valley giant. Paytm Labs is the R&D arm for hyper-growth Indian financial technology firm Paytm. It’s led by Harinder Takhar, a Blackberry alumnus who started this facility in 2014 after three years as the parent company’s first CEO.
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Engineering company forecasts higher adjusted profit for 2017

Shift means executives’ incentives are no longer tied to adjusted earnings per share

This morning I will be closing 2 of the remaining 6 live trades which will open a couple more spots which will hopefully mean adding a new trade tomorrow. On February 1st I opened a trade going long Priceline (PCLN) and short Twitter (TWTR) which has done well and currently stands at +31,35% after a continued collapse by Twitter and once again Priceline beating on earnings. As always, you can see my 2017 (and previous years) long and short trades here:

http://www.intelligentspeculator.net/livetrades

The second trade that I’m closing was traded a couple of weeks ago when I went long Netflix (NFLX) and short Etsy (ETSY). Yesterday, ETSY got crushed after disappointing Q4 earnings so that trade now stands at +25.63%.

​The company behind the popular messaging app Snapchat is expected to start trading Thursday after a better-than-expected stock offering.