Stock Talk

I'll be honest, I really had no intention about offering any takes on the cryptocurrency mania but I get asked ALL THE TIME about whether it's worth investing in Bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies that are exploding on the scene. To me investing Bitcoin is no different than investing in any other traditional paper currency....which is highly risky. At the same time, I really haven't had much of a grasp of how Bitcoin operates and what makes it so appealing. So in this podcast, Aman takes a pretty deep dive to figure out how Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. work. So if you are in the same boat, then check out this podcast and let's learn together! NOTE: This episode was recorded prior to a couple of developments that have cast a bit of a cloud on Bitcoin, specifically China's decision to ban Bitcoin Exchanges as well as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon's take that Bitcoin is a fraud, comparing it to the Tulip Mania.

In the last few months we've seen some business activities and transactions that I think will have major reverberations on how we do business and ultimately the types of investment opportunities that will emerge from them. In this episode Aman offers some hot takes on the Amazon/Whole Foods merger, the Alphabet (Google) partnership with Walmart, and finally the decision by Disney to part ways with Netflix and start distributing its content directly to customers. These three strategic moves are truly game changer moments in business.

With the Canadian dollar increasing in value by just over 10 percent recently, I decided to do a little cross boarder shopping in July and increase some of my US stock holdings. At the same time, I used the stronger Loonie to add some new stocks to my portfolios.

With Mad King from North Korea and the Mad King from the USA trash talking using their nuclear weapons on each other, Aman tries to map out what that could look like and how it could potentially impact stock prices around the world. Suffice to say, it won't be good in the short term. What's more concerning is the impact it will have on how commerce is done around the world. As much as the rhetoric has been quite hot, these 2 "leaders" have a track record for talking a good game.

As stock markets around the world set record high's on an almost daily basis and despite all political chaos and maybe surrounding it, I keep wondering, and asking myself how sustainable this is? This just can't continue on like this.  Something deep down is telling me this epic run will somehow end...but how? What is it that will take this whole house of cards down? In this episode Aman tries to brainstorm some possible scenarios that could be the trigger to pulling the stock market down.

The active investing versus passive investing debate continues and it will likely continue forever. An interesting wrinkle though in the debate has popped up and it involves literally the patriarch of index investing changing teams. In this episode Aman dives into this stunning change of heart. At first Aman was ready to go into full "gotcha" on this, however this case highlights an important quality that investors needs to build up in their tool box. Excuse the coughs!

At the core of my personal investing ideology is the concept of having entry and exit points for when a stock or ETF reaches a certain return level. In this episode I share some of my recent investment decisions many of which came to down to whether to hold or sell a few positions in my portfolios as they had crossed my personal return threshold.

In episode 69, I reported some interesting changes that occurred on my Robo Advisor portfolio that I setup a few years ago. At the time, I thought that the changes could have been temporary as part of stepping stone. In this episode, I check in on my Robo portfolio at the mid-year mark to see if those changes have remained.

RANT ALERT! In episode 66, I went on a bit of a rant after a blogger said I was asking the wrong investing question in that performance shouldn't play a factor in investing. A common feeling people who start investing experience is intimidation, especially from the financial services industry. They feel like they are being talked down and become hesitant to learn more and ask questions. This plays into to investment industry's hands. To give you another example, in this episode, I share with you a question person asked about robo advisors, and the response that was provided by someone who works in the financial services industry. The response made me really angry but at the same time didn't surprise me as it was a typical response I would expect.

A right of passage for anyone studying investing and finance in university is to face the beat down of learning one of core investing theories which is the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). It is a particularly dry topic which I recall on several occasions made me almost fall asleep in class. In school they basically ram the EMH into your brain and I really wasn't in any place to know if it was a good thing. You just accept it and move on. Over time though, I grew more suspect of this model especially after seeing people like Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch basically thumb their nose at it and had a bank account to prove it. Over time also I've become a proponent of behavioural finance theories having a greater impact in how we make investing decisions. Another variant of the EMH has emerged, called the Adaptive Market Hypothesis, which integrates a behavioural component to the discussion. In this episode I examine both Hypothesis and offer my takes on the pro's and cons of each.