All posts by Financial Independence Hub

Gold still shines but watch China

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Financial advisors should ensure that gold comprises 20% of their clients’ portfolios to improve their return and lower volatility, Nick Barisheff, CEO of BMG Group Inc. in Markham told Wealth Professional.

“From an advisor’s point of view, that’s the easiest thing to do: just add some gold to your client’s portfolio – without getting into all the complexity of a currency or anything else,” he said. “It’s that simple. That’s as far as they need to go. Everything else gets very complicated.”

Barisheff was reacting to recent commentary that gold’s place in the investment world was being eclipsed by Bitcoin. He noted that for something to be an effective currency, it needs to store wealth as well as be a medium of exchange – and Bitcoin doesn’t accomplish that.

“You can’t conceive of doing a long-term bond with Bitcoin because the volatility in the fluctuation is so huge,” he said, “and then there’s really nothing backing it.”

While Bitcoin’s value is increasing, Barisheff attributed that to the hype surrounding it rather than any solid justification for it.

The Bank of International Settlements, which he noted sets the rules for all central and commercial banks, has authorized gold as a zero-risk monetary asset equal to U.S Treasuries.

“They didn’t say that about Bitcoin,” he added.

China and Russia increasing their holdings of Gold

The other thing that Barisheff said to watch for in the world of gold is the fact that the world’s central banks hold about 30,000 tonnes of gold – and the central banks of China and Russia, as well as other countries, are increasing their holdings. China has said it has 1,600 tonnes of gold, but he said some estimate that its sovereign wealth fund, which doesn’t have to report its gold holdings, may have 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of gold.

“They will move it to the central bank when they feel they’ve bought enough gold,” he said. “Their officials have publicly stated that their objective is to have more gold than the U.S. and the U.S. has 8,000 tones, so China’s goal is to have 10,000 tonnes. So, they’re not going to announce that until they’ve finished buying the gold because, when they do, the price will go ballistic, and it’s in China’s best interest for the price to stay down for the time-being.”

Once that happens, he noted that there will be questions about where they got that gold. Continue Reading…

7 ways to earn money with a Mobile Phone

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How can you earn money by using a mobile phone? You are on your phone constantly, and, for some of us, it’s seemingly impossible to put down. Make your screen time do double duty by tapping into your phone’s earning potential.

To help you earn a little extra cash, we asked business professionals and financial experts and this question for their best advice. From managing social media accounts to selling your stuff online, there are several strategies you can use to generate an income using your smartphone.

Here are seven ways you can make a profit by using a mobile phone:

  • Raid your Closet
  • Get Cash back
  • Help test Websites
  • Manage Social Media accounts
  • Download a Research App
  • Take on Small Jobs
  • Sell your Stuff

Raid your Closet

One way to earn extra cash by using your mobile phone is to look at what’s in your closet. Apps like Depop or Poshmark allow you to sell your unused clothes from your phone. It’s a fact that sometimes clothes get buried in drawers and in the back of the closet forgotten to time. When you need some spare cash, or you just want some additional income, you don’t have to do a lot to get it. In your spare time, take a look at what’s in your closet that you’re not wearing anymore and support sustainable practices by giving your clothes a new home rather than just tossing them out. — Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional

Get Cash back

Your mobile phone can be a time-sucking, social-media black hole. But it could also be the savvy consumer’s most powerful secret weapon. You can earn cashback with awesome free apps, such as Ibotta, at thousands of retailers on almost every product you can think of. And simply getting 2–5% of what you’ve spent really starts to add up. So every time you hit the shops, make sure your cashback app is fired up and ready to keep your wallet a little heavier. — Chris Panteli, LifeUpswing

Help test websites

The app User Testing sets business and website owners up with technology users and asks them a series of questions to help improve the user experience of their site or app. Each session pays $10, and some “live” sessions pay $30–$60 for your responses. It’s very easy to sign up for and a great way to make some extra cash for the week! Tests are chosen based on your experiences, so be sure to be thorough when filling out your profile! — Katie Fellenz, Trust & Will

Manage Social Media account

Social media has turned out to be a huge platform with various jobs associated with it. The ‘Social media assistant’ is one such job where you manage the social media profiles of a client. It’s hassle-free as most of the tasks are performed through your mobile device. Continue Reading…

5 ways to use LinkedIn to boost your B2B Brand

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Image Pixabay

By Michael Meyer

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Social media marketing is an incredibly lucrative way to generate leads, grow your company, and engage with your target audience. One popular way to market in the B2B space involves using LinkedIn. This platform for professionals is a top-notch spot to identify and nurture leads, simply because so many business leaders and owners spend time on the platform.

Unfortunately, getting the hang of LinkedIn can be a bit difficult if you’ve never marketed your B2B company on the platform before. Luckily, there are a ton of ways to use LinkedIn to grow your business, and we put together a list of our top tips for success.

Are you unsure of how to use LinkedIn to really start boosting and growing your B2B company? Check out our top five tips for using LinkedIn below!

These methods for using LinkedIn to improve your B2B company’s customer engagement are very helpful, and also easy to implement.

●    Use SEO to Your Advantage

Having a top-notch business profile on LinkedIn will only be beneficial to a certain point. Search engine optimization is your best friend when it comes to B2B marketing. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to implement an SEO strategy when setting up your LinkedIn profile.

Conduct keyword research for your brand and industry and insert those keywords in various areas of your business profile. Remember to avoid keyword bloating or using keywords that aren’t relevant. It’s not even necessary to engage in in-depth research when it comes to finding the right keywords for your profile. Simply list the phrases and words a customer would be most likely to use to find your business and incorporate them.

●    Use LinkedIn to Experiment with your Marketing

If you’ve only recently launched your B2B company or are just now getting into social media marketing, this is a great opportunity to experiment with your content. Once you’re at a point where you understand the ins and outs of LinkedIn’s functionality, start diversifying your content. Just as well, if you use B2B appointment setting services, you can experiment with promoting your easy-to-set appointments via LinkedIn as well to streamline your leads.

Post at various different times throughout the week and keep an eye on which posts get the most engagement. Use a variety of content in different tones and measure how much engagement they get. Keep a keen eye on your analytics. Browse through your competitors’ LinkedIn profiles to see what they are doing.

●    Take advantage of Groups

The group feature on LinkedIn isn’t just for networking or looking for employment. Rather, groups are designed to meet a wide range of interests, both work-focused and personal. Look at groups that align with your industry, solution, and work-related interests. Join as many of these groups as possible.

Once you’ve been let into a few groups, start posting your ideas or B2B-related stories. Ask and answer questions. The key here isn’t to advertise your business, but to be a credible figure in your industry. You might be surprised by the number of referrals or recommendations your company will receive from simply being involved with like-minded business professionals. Continue Reading…

How to protect against Inflation

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By Dale Roberts, cutthecrapinvesting

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

It is probably the greatest (and potentially dangerous) misconception in the investing landscape, that stocks protect you from inflation. That’s simply not true. While stocks have a long term history of besting inflation, they can fail in many periods, short and extended. Stock markets do not always work as an inflation hedge. And Vanguard suggests that their effectiveness will wane as the types of stocks that can work against inflation no longer have strong representation in the broad market stock indices. We’ll show you how to protect against inflation on the Sunday Reads.

Let’s cut to the chase. It’s something I’ve known for quite some time and I’m more than happy to see Vanguard beat the drum. If you want to protect your portfolio from inflation or stagflation (its evil stag cousin) own commodities.

When you own commodities or a commodities index fund or ETF, you own the raw materials that make the products, foods and energy needed to sustain life and society as we know it.

Source: Investopedia

Stocks don’t work

Let’s get this out of the way first, shall we, from this Vanguard post, the potency of commodities as an inflation hedge …

And that’s during a period when we’ve mostly had muted inflation. Stocks don’t like unexpected inflation, like the kind we’re having in 2021. That is, inflation above recent trends and expected trends.

If we go back to the stagflation period of the 1970’s and into the early 1980’s it’s a complete mess for stock investors. Have a look at MoneyChimp and be sure to hit that inflation button. This shows a negative real (inflation adjusted) return from 1968 through 1982, for US stocks. In real dollar terms, $1.00 became 94 cents.

Global stocks did not perform much better. And surprisingly neither did the Canadian stock market that was more commodities and energy-concentrated for the period.

Here’s global stocks for the period showing no return premium vs inflation. The chart is courtesy of ReSolve Asset Management.

And in this post on the Permanent Portfolio, you’ll see that even the traditional stock and bond balanced portfolio failed for an extended period during stagflation. There are other periods of ‘don’t work’ for the balanced portfolio (and for different reasons) within that chart.

Commodities hedge is strong and consistent

While stocks are not a consistent hedge for inflation, commodities have been, historically. And once again, this is during a period of mostly muted inflation, save for a few periods of unexpected inflation. Luckily for investors, that inflation has been transitory in the last few decades.

From that Vanguard post …

Over the last three decades, commodities have had a statistically significant and largely consistent positive inflation beta, or predicted reaction to a unit of inflation. The research, led by Sue Wang, Ph.D., an assistant portfolio manager in Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group, found that over the last decade, commodities’ inflation beta has fluctuated largely between 7 and 9. This suggests that a 1% rise in unexpected inflation would produce a 7% to 9% rise in commodities.

Here’s a great chart that shows gold, commodities and REITs as inflation hedges in periods of meaningful inflation. The orange bar is the commodities index.

While gold was the most explosive during the bulk of the period of stagflation, we see that a commodities basket is more reliable. Admittedly, gold can fall down as an inflation hedge in certain periods. That said, there are other reasons for holding gold as a hedge against declining real bond yields and as a form of disaster insurance and a long term hedge against ongoing currency debasement.

Image
Lance Roberts from RIA Advisors

In the above chart we see gold working in all of the stock market failures for the period shown. Again, most notably during stagflation.

I like to also hold some gold and gold stocks on the side in addition to commodities baskets. Readers will also know that I am also investing in bitcoin – that new gold or digital gold. Continue Reading…

Vanguard Canada launches two actively managed global mutual funds

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Vanguard Investments Canada Inc. has announced the launch of two new globally diversified and actively managed mutual funds it describes as being “low cost”: Vanguard Global Credit Bond Fund [VIC500] and Vanguard Global Equity Fund [VIC600.] complement the firm’s current line-up of 37 ETFs and four mutual funds.

Management fees will be 0.40 and 0.55% respectively. Asked whether this means payment of trailer commissions to financial advisors, Vanguard Canada spokesperson Matthew Gierasimczuk told the Hub: “No. Vanguard doesn’t pay trailing commissions in any of our markets since we have a longstanding belief it leads to a conflict of interest for investors.” The funds are available through most wealth advisors and also on Questrade and Qtrade, he added.

In a news release issued on Sept. 13, Vanguard Investments Canada Inc. Managing Director and Head Kathy Bock said:

“Within an uncertain investing climate, Canadian investors and their advisors are looking for quality, long-term and high-performing investment products, at a low-cost … These mutual funds provide that and reflect our deep 45-year history in active management with proven portfolio manager expertise that can help investors achieve success.”

Globally, The Vanguard Group, Inc. manages over USD $8.1 trillion in assets and is one of the world’s largest active managers with USD $1.7 trillion in global actively managed assets under management.

“Since introducing our mutual funds three years ago, Canadians have embraced our differentiated approach to active management, providing investors with access to skilled global investment managers with a long-term view,” said Tim Huver, Head of Intermediary Sales, Vanguard Investments Canada Inc. “These two global funds can act as a core holiding or complement to an investor’s equity or fixed income portfolios.”

Vanguard Global Credit Bond Fund seeks to provide a moderate and sustainable level of current income by investing primarily in non-government fixed income securities of issuers located anywhere in the world. The fund will have a management fee of 0.40%. The fund will be sub-advised by The Vanguard’ Group Inc.’s Fixed Income Group, a global team of more than 185 tenured and dedicated professionals overseeing USD $2.1 trillion in total assets. For 40 years, Vanguard Fixed Income Group has been distinguished in the industry by its deep investment capabilities, disciplined security selection process, rigorous risk management techniques and strong long-term performance.

Vanguard Global Equity Fund seeks to provide long-term capital appreciation by investing primarily in equity securities of companies located anywhere around the world. The fund will be sub-advised by Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited and Marathon Asset Management Limited. These sub-advisors have worked with Vanguard for decades and collectively manage over USD $500 billion in assets under management. The maximum management fee for the fund will be 0.55%.