Investing

We recently received the following question by e-mail:

Hi Mr. Cheap, I just wanted to get your opinion on this theory and if you think its wortwhile in the long run. The theory goes like this; for every dollar you have in a trading in account, you can borrown a dollar on top of that. [...]

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There’s probably a decent chance this post will make you angry.  Feel free to skip it if you want to stay in a good mood.  If you decide to read it anyway and are looking for ways to vent your anger, insulting the author (Mr. Cheap) or announcing that you’ve unsubscribed to our feed are [...]

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On Tuesday I posted about Beginning Investment Strategies to Consider, and as promised, in this post I’ll detail investing strategies I think beginner investors should avoid.
There are countless people who want to get your money for a “can’t lose” investment.  I’ll try to talk about general “warning signs”, but inherently this is a topic that [...]

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I’ve commented before about how dangerous it is to give investment advice to friends and family.  I keep running into people who are very bright individuals in other areas of their life, but just throw up their hands in frustration and give up when it comes to managing their money.  Never one to learn from [...]

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Three years ago I got into P2P lending (through Prosper) with an American friend of mine (she could open the account, whereas I couldn’t).  This is a summary of my experiences.
Three years is a reasonable length of time to get a feel for a new investment vehicle like this, as this is the time length [...]

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At the end of this post there will be a technique for getting a MASSIVE ROI on your investment.  Truth be told, this can be pushed a little further and get an infinite ROI.  Much like having to eat your vegetables before desert, you’re not allowed to skip to the end of the post (and [...]

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I entered into a stock picking contest with some other bloggers – who shall rue the day they decided to do battle with Four Pillars! 
Traditionally, the only way to do well with stock picking contests is to swing for the fences and hope for the best.  With that in mind I picked 4 [...]

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A great way to invest is to make regular investments.  Million Dollar Journey recently outlined 4 ways to invest small amounts of money each month, all of which are solid and worth considering.  I agree with his 1% rule (the trading commission should never exceed 1% of the value of the trade), which can make [...]

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I know this is a bit late but I finally got around to calculating my 2008 portfolio return. For some reason this year I was not as motivated to know how much money I made..lost.
Given that most markets went down at least 30% we did quite well with only a 17% drop.
Canadian Capitalist has [...]

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This is actually my second post entitled “Incentive“, but the previous post was from almost two years ago (on my first blog), and I think I can express more clearly what I was trying to say back then.
It’s not terribly enlightening to assert that the threat of punishment or the promise of reward goes a [...]

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I recently read John T. Reed’s “How to Buy Real Estate for at Least 20% Below Market Value” (Vol. 1) and enjoyed it.  He warns that the book is only applicable for buying in America (and actually refuses to sell it internationally, an American friend got it for me for Christmas).  He’s right that the [...]

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Jordan has agreed to help out the crack writing staff here at Four Pillars by contributing the occasional post.  He is a young guy living and working from home in Vancouver with his wife and 2 young kids.  Jordan is a computer geek at heart and last year discovered he also had a hidden passion [...]

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I love the idea of passive income.  Some magic is performed, and a steady stream of money comes into your life every month.  A Google search on this site with the term “passive income” turns up 55 hits, so its definitely a popular topic.  As much as I think passive investing in index funds is [...]

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There’s a lot of fear about the stock market right now.  As Mike wrote recently, we’re in a bear market.  You read about people who are upset, people who are excited, and people who don’t seem to care.
What is the right reaction?
I think all three are the right reaction.  Which one is right for you [...]

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The markets have not done well lately….the TSX in particular has gone down from around 15,000 points down to a bit less than 10,000 points as I wrote this (one week ago).  Hopefully there will be some stunning rallies and we will all get a good laugh out of this outdated post!
I have to admit [...]

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Are we there yet?  The week before last, the TSX dropped 11%, last week it dropped 16%.  Oddly enough on Friday I was expecting the worst day so far since the Asian markets had crashed about 8% and the Japanese market had dropped almost 10% overnight.  When the TSX went down 5.5% I felt oddly [...]

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I’ve had this post bouncing around in my head for a while. It would have been far more valuable to post it before Oct 7th: some of the ideas may be obvious in hindsight now.
Dividend investors love seeing a long history of uninterrupted dividend payments (ideally growing steadily as well). Often we’ll [...]

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What, me worry?  Yes, of course I’m worried – it’s tough to watch the markets fall and hear about how the American credit market is seized up without wondering if we edging too close to the end of civilization as we know it.  I was quite surprised when the “Great American Bailout” vote didn’t pass [...]

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One of the most basic of stock buying strategies is to buy low and sell high.  It makes absolute mathematical sense, but the difficulty is the execution.  Psychology works against us: when markets are high there’s a euphoria that makes it very easy to join in with the herd and buy high.  Conversely, when markets [...]

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As most readers know I’m pretty big on low cost investing – it’s one thing to talk about it – how about some actual suggestions on how to do it!!

Save on taxes – Investing in a taxable account when you have tax free retirement accounts available is costing you money.  Max the rrsp/401(k)/roth accounts first!
Save [...]

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As some of you have already heard, Canadian Capitalist broke the news last week that RBC Direct discount  brokerage (read a review of RBC Direct) is offering a 1% payment for any assets transferred from another investment institution.  There are limits to the rebate but they are quite generous  ($2500 per account type).
I’m a big [...]

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I’ve been doing some research into dividends for a project I’m working on – I thought the various dividend dates would make an interesting post for anyone who owns dividend paying securities – either stocks or mutual funds.
Dividend dates are the relevant dates surrounding the dividend payments. These are important to know because if [...]

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In my recent review of “Rule #1″ I talked a bit about people taking Buffett quotes and twisting them. A while ago during a conversation about “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” a similar idea came up that people can use aphorisms to mean whatever they want. One Peter Lynch quote that I think gets [...]

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It was recently announced that Philip Morris put in a generous offer to buy Rothmans (of which Mr. Cheap is a little less than a majority owner).  On news of the offer, Rothmans stock shot up above $30 / share then sank back to a bit below it (to $29.71 as of the holiday weekend).  [...]

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This is part two of my three part series comparing various Canadian and American investment accounts.

This post deals with the Canadian RESP and the U.S. 529 plan which are both educational savings accounts. For the 529 account we are only looking at the 529 savings account (not the pre-paid plan). In part [...]

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I had a request recently from a blogger friend of mine – Paid Twice, who thought it would be a good idea to do a post on the common U.S. and Canadian investment accounts and try to find which ones are comparable. This post deals with the Canadian RRSP and the U.S. 401(k) plan – [...]

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This article was originally posted on Blueprint for Prosperity.
A lot of inexperienced investors who invest in stocks either through mutual funds, index fund, ETFs or owning the stocks directly want great returns with minimal or no losses in the bad times. Unfortunately this isn’t possible for the simple reason that you can’t get great rewards [...]

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This article was originally posted on Blueprint for Prosperity. Things have changed in the p2p world since this was written but I’ve left the post as is.
In the blogosphere there seems to be a lot of excitement about peer-to-peer lending which is the ability to lend money to other individuals through companies such as [...]

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The Personal Financier wrote a very interesting post on the idea that long term equity investments are not risk free which is not a popular opinion for most investors.
A lot of the investment books that I’ve read often quote a long term equity return figure of 10% for equities. The idea is that while [...]

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Most Canadians are probably familiar with the company BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises) since it is the biggest telephone provider in the country. Last June, the Ontario Teacher’s fund made the winning bid of $42.75 per share for BCE for a total of $35 billion dollars. Since that time the collapse of the credit [...]

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A while ago I hit a bit of a milestone with my stock portfolio, and collected my 2000th dividend dollar, which has made me somewhat retrospective. I’ve gotten more used to having the dividends roll in, but I still feel a happy rush whenever they show up in my E*Trade account. Because I’m [...]

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If someone had the choice between a $1,000 / month or a 1% monthly increase on their investments, which is the better choice?
The correct answer, of course, is “it depends”. If someone had $100,000 than 1% monthly would be $1,000. So if you have more than $100k, the increase is better, and [...]

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I had recently written about my decision to buy some REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts). REITs are a good way to add diversification to your portfolio since they are not closely correlated with equity returns. In the last post I looked at an ETF and several individual Canadian REITs. I’ve been thinking [...]

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A man I knew a few years back got seriously into real estate after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and inheriting a million dollars (his father-in-law died). He had been living in Toronto, and after discovering how much cheaper property was in smaller towns (duh) he started buying anything he could get his hands [...]

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We recently received a question from a reader whose name is Samantha. Samantha asked about the benefits of contributing to a RRSPs (401k for our American readers) for younger investors under the age of 30 who have other debts. My first reaction was – how would I know? It’s been almost a [...]

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Last week, (ironically on April 1) Questrade discount brokerage announced a change to their trading price structure. The new trading costs are 1 cent per share with a $4.95 minimum and $9.95 maximum.
I don’t understand
Ok, here are some sample trading costs:

If you trade 70 shares then you pay the minimum $4.95
If you trade [...]

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Lending Club, the popular peer-to-peer lending site sent out an email this week to members basically saying that they are ceasing to accept any new loans indefinitely. In the email they mention they are filing with the SEC to be able to create a secondary market for their loans, but there isn’t any mention [...]

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