With the majority of my stuff in the Canadian Bond Fund I haven't had much to either worry about or pay attention to for the past while.
On the trading account side I've only made four trades this year and two of those were the purchase and the sale of Apple shares. As usual, I should have held on to Apple. Even though I did all right, buying for $535.00 and selling for $610.00, they closed at $696.00 yesterday. Enough said.
I'm still liking my Canadian Bank stocks. I'm holding BMO, RBC & TD. The big five turned in combined earnings of $7.9B for the most recent quarter. Yep, that's B for Billion! I remember back in '94 or '95 when RBC first reported ANNUAL earnings exceeding a Billion. It was considered almost obscene and RBC engaged in a huge advertising campaign to tell Canadians what good corporate citizens they were, how much they paid in taxes, how many people they employed, how much they donated to charities etc. Now, QUARTERLY profits of a Billion plus are the norm.
As usual, I'm in a bit of love/hate relationship with the banks. A couple of recent trips to the US once again reinforced why I wrote Canadian Banks - We Love 'Em and Hate 'Em...for the same reason back in May, 2011. You just can't do anything relating to exchanging Canadian and US funds without feeling like you're getting royally $crewed. Doesn't matter if you're buying or selling US or making a purchase on you credit card you always get hosed for about 2.5%! It may be possible to determine a value for the time spent when an actual person does calculations when you're exchanging funds but just making a credit card purchase...come on now. You gotta figure they hose the merchant at least 1.5% and then they charge you 2.5% for a forex transaction. What a racket!
More about the US travels and possible investment opportunities in an upcoming post. In the meantime;
On the trading account side I've only made four trades this year and two of those were the purchase and the sale of Apple shares. As usual, I should have held on to Apple. Even though I did all right, buying for $535.00 and selling for $610.00, they closed at $696.00 yesterday. Enough said.
I'm still liking my Canadian Bank stocks. I'm holding BMO, RBC & TD. The big five turned in combined earnings of $7.9B for the most recent quarter. Yep, that's B for Billion! I remember back in '94 or '95 when RBC first reported ANNUAL earnings exceeding a Billion. It was considered almost obscene and RBC engaged in a huge advertising campaign to tell Canadians what good corporate citizens they were, how much they paid in taxes, how many people they employed, how much they donated to charities etc. Now, QUARTERLY profits of a Billion plus are the norm.
As usual, I'm in a bit of love/hate relationship with the banks. A couple of recent trips to the US once again reinforced why I wrote Canadian Banks - We Love 'Em and Hate 'Em...for the same reason back in May, 2011. You just can't do anything relating to exchanging Canadian and US funds without feeling like you're getting royally $crewed. Doesn't matter if you're buying or selling US or making a purchase on you credit card you always get hosed for about 2.5%! It may be possible to determine a value for the time spent when an actual person does calculations when you're exchanging funds but just making a credit card purchase...come on now. You gotta figure they hose the merchant at least 1.5% and then they charge you 2.5% for a forex transaction. What a racket!
More about the US travels and possible investment opportunities in an upcoming post. In the meantime;
Good Luck and Happy Investing!
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