All posts by Jonathan Chevreau

Beware out-of-the-blue phone calls and emails from fraudsters posing as Taxman

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | February 9, 2016

Now that employer T4s are being issued, tax time is officially under way, and with it there seems to be a rising incidence of telephone scam attempts from fraudsters purporting to represent the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA.

The warnings have been out there for months in various media outlets and via the CRA itself, as a quick Google search will reveal.

However, the problem hit home for me last week when I received two disturbing phone calls in two consecutive days. The voices were foreign-sounding in both instances and both insistent and aggressive: the gist was that unless I sent them money immediately, that the CRA would commence legal proceedings against me.

Coming as they did out of the blue, I didn’t think to take notes or string them along: the first call I hung up almost instantly, the second time I briefly tried to engage the perpetrator in a dialogue that went nowhere. “I don’t think so,” were my last words.

On January 16, 2016, the CRA’s web site revealed most of what you need to know about these phone scams. The first step is to recognize that a particular phone call, email, text message claiming to be from the CRA and requesting certain personal information is unlikely to be what the perpetrator claims.

Don’t provide personal info over phone

Time to repatriate US dollar gains back into loonie?

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | February 4, 2016

The Canadian dollar or loonie is under pressure amid weak oil prices and a strengthening U.S. currency. Today, the loonie dropped to 78.39 cents for a U.S dollar the lowest in a many years. — The Canadian dollar is under pressure amid weak oil prices and a strengthening U.S. currency.

My latest Financial Post blog is titled It might be time to repatriate your US$ investments and book those currency gains.

Actually, the C$ has strengthened of late, so the timing isn’t as opportune as a few weeks ago. After a long period of strength, the US$ has slightly weakened against various global currencies, even against the loonie.

Even so, we’re still a long way from par and it may make sense to book some of the gains, and if the loonie starts to sag further, repeat the process every time it falls 3 cents or so.

See also the following mid-January Hub blog by Adrian Mastracci: Falling Loonie Strategies.

The Abundant Retirement Summit and Victory Lap Retirement

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | February 3, 2016

As readers may know, Hub blogger Michael Drak and I have just finished co-authoring a book about life after Financial Independence. It’s titled Victory Lap Retirement, and describes a new post-corporate lifestyle that combines work and play, much like the illustration to the left.

The book has just gone through its second editing pass. Next we’ll be sending out pre-release PDFs to media and influencers, looking for testimonials: if you’re interested please let me know at jonathan@findependencehub.com or Michael at michael.drak@yahoo.ca.

The finished product should be in book stores and available online by mid-summer.

Half-hour interview will be at Abundant Retirement telesummit

Weekly Wrap: MoneySense’s 2016 ETF All-Stars; BMO and Horizons ETF Outlooks for 2016

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 30, 2016

Lots of ETF developments to report as we close out January. The February/March 2016 issue of MoneySense magazine includes the latest edition of a feature I spearheaded called the ETF All-Stars.

The focus is on low-cost broadly diversified “plain-vanilla” ETFs but we also included several “Satellite” picks, some of them low-volatility products covering Canada, the US, EAFE and Emerging Markets.

Our six panelists strive not to change the “All-star” lineup too often, since the idea is to minimize turnover and taxes, while having low-cost portfolios that can be bought and held over the proverbial long run. Even so, each year there there are inevitably a few substitutions and replacements and this time around we modestly expanded the number of “All-Stars.”

BMO’s ETF Outlook 2016

Meanwhile on Friday, BMO Global Asset Management released its ETF Outlook 2016. It noted the ETF industry had another record-breaking year in 2015: globally it grew to more than US$2.9 trillion as of December 2015, with a record US$372 billion in new assets the last year.

The Canadian ETF industry also had an historic year, with a record $C16.3 billion in inflows, and assets hitting just under $C90 billion, which is twice as much as five years ago.

Market volatility and ETFs

The report reprises the market volatility of 2015, notable the China-centric selloff of August 24, the surprise non-hike of interest rates by the Fed on Sept. 16th, and its finally raising them by 25 basis points on December 16. And of course there was the continued slide in the price of oil, which hurts resource-based economies like Canada.

Record cash levels in bear market suggests buying opportunity for stocks?

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 26, 2016

Stock market trend business concept and financial prediction uncertainty symbol as a heard of bulls and bears running towards each other to set the direction of an economic forecast. — Is Cash your no-man’s land between battle of the bulls and bears? Try not to get trampled!

Here’s my latest Financial Post blog, which looks at the record amounts of cash scared Canadian investors are sitting on during this bear market. For full blog, click on the coloured headline here: When Volatility Scares You, is it Time for Investors to Buy or Sell?

The blog accompanies Garry Marr’s piece on the CIBC World Markets report released Tuesday: Ocean of Fear: Canadian investors sitting on record cash pile risk billion in lost returns.

Since markets got off to their worst January in decades, per force the Hub has been running several blogs on the topic of volatility. See also from the past week:

Hedging in the Retirement Risk Zone (which is mentioned in today’s FP blog).

Volatile, Unpredictable and entirely normal.

Behavioural Finance: Coping with Losses.