Sunday, September 8, 2013

What are you doing with your money while you wait?

Assuming you are waiting to buy or have decided not to, then you have a nice pile of cash building up. What are you doing with it in this forced low rate era?

None of the Central banks (UK, Canada, Euro), despite talking tough about soaring consumer debt have had the balls to increase rates. We are STILL sitting with rates at emergency levels and below inflation.

So what options do we have for our money?

Well a few and none are that enticing.

There is the GIC. Rates are pretty low at the moment. The banks still haven't budged much from the 1.0-1.4% for a one year fixed. You can get a little more by bargaining with your advisor. This has always irked me BTW. Why not just post better rates for everyone. Our banks, like our telecom carriers either need competition or serious regulating.

I just picked up 1.8% for a one year at ING direct which is owned by Scotia now. I got this from a brokerage account and was better than their posted rate. Other institutions with lower credit ratings offer up to 2%for a one year and 3% for a five year fixed. The CDIC will insure up to $100,000 if the GIC is under 5 years.

Either way you slice it, it isn't a big chunk of money. After taxes, it is below inflation. It used to be that a one year GIC matched inflation after tax and a two year beat it. Not now that the Central banks are trying to force us to speculate (and then complain when we do)

So what else is there?

Bonds.

You can buy bonds via any brokerage account. The rates are not much better than GIC rates at present for high credit companies and Government of Canada bonds are even lower. You can tweek things by buying stripped bonds which have a lower tax rate (capital gains instead of interest taxation). You can google this if interested.

Preferred shares.

These are shares that behave like bonds. They come in several flavours, some pay a steady % until maturity, others reset the rate depending on the Bank of Canada rate or rates for a ten year bond, others maybe convertible into the shares of the issuer. They pay higher rates as they are considered 'long bonds'. However as they are shares too, they are taxed better than bonds and so a 5% yield in preferreds would be the same as getting almost 7% in a bond if you pay tax at the highest rate.

Here is a good site which explains and tracks them. Though he also writes of other stuff in his commentary which I usually skip over.

Garth Turner used to be a big proponent of them on his site Greater Fool. They have done very well for the last few years and then got slaughtered recently as rates have been rising. He has not mentioned them recently :)


Then there is the stock market. You can buy stocks directly, or mutual funds or index funds etc. Bank shares have done very well as they have been in the sweat spot.

They have borrowed short (from all the people having one year GICs or getting near zero interest in their savings account) and lending out several % higher to mortgage borrowers. Even though rates are low, the spread between the short end and then long end of the rates curve has been widening and therefore the banks have been making even more money than before.

The best thing is that they have been doing this risk-free. Anyone with high leverage or poor credit risk they passed off to that garbage can of risk - the tax-payer back CHMC. A scandal IMVHO.

However this circus is slowly coming to an end, as outsiders from the World Bank to Investment houses to independent economists have told our Government how poorly risk is managed at the CMHC, they seem to be finally getting the message.

The stock market was a good place to be for the last four years, especially the US market. But I am too leery to put new money unless there is a good correction. Rising rates are usually bad for the earnings of companies

That's about it. Can't think of many more options.

What are you doing out there?

26 comments:

  1. Mostly in GICs yielding next to nothing. But I find I get a better deal from Credit Unions than banks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peoples Trust pays 3% on TSFA. But I heard it'd very bad service. Worth a look.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The prefereds have lost about 10% in the last two months. Screaming buy or new paradigm?

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you want a low cost and low hassle, sleep at night portfolio, spread the money out into various ETFs - Bonds, Preferred, REIT, Cdn Equity, US Equity, Intl ex Cad ex US equity, Emerging market Equity and Bonds, precious metals and commodities. Both IShares (from Claymore days) and Horizons have some interesting ETFs. Alternatively I think there might also be some target date retirement funds now as well. They tend to handle asset mix rebalance over time automatically for you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 561 new
    225 price change
    240 sold

    7239 detached
    8644 attached

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fraser Valley MOI 8.3 for August

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  7. Fish, there are corp bonds that go UP if/when interest rates go up. By Onex, is one.

    ReplyDelete
  8. And, I think it pays around 6%. But the price fluctuates. It went down about 10 or 15 pc when there was talk of never ending QE. And now it's back up.

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  9. well, this is going to sound completely idiotic. i kept hoping for the housing market to change, but it only changed towards more insanity. i was also really gun-shy after the last crash, and have stockpiled this:

    $160K in CASH (earning me nothing)
    $100K in RRSPs with Royal Bank (doing reasonably well)
    $60K in investments (doing well, but it's also the smallest part of my portfolio)

    early 40s and single.

    any advice?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. First of all, I would put at least $100k of you cash into an e-savings account at People's Trust. You'll earn 1.9% or $1900 per year - it's totally liquid and insured up to $100k.

      http://www.peoplestrust.com/main/index.php?en&e_savings

      Link the People's Trust account to your regular checking account so you can make e-transfers online anytime you want.

      By the way, I think their service is fine.... ;-)

      Delete
  10. No Condo, I was that way, but have recently come to the conclusion life is for living. Did pretty well on the US market and recently bought at 32 foot sail boat with a some of the proceeds.

    Not an investment in the financial sense but a bit of a feeling of ownership without the exposure to downward trending housing market. And chicks dig it. ;)

    It was earning next to nothing in interest so might as well put it to work helping to make life more fun. Also the market is depressed locally so lots of good deals if you do your research.

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  11. balls-to-the-wall 100% stocks for 27 years and millions in my account. Right now I go through 100 stocks in order to find one good bet. There are always good bets, but to learn how to invest well takes about 5 or 10 thousand hours of time. Have to start young. You are too late Fish. Stick to index funds.

    ReplyDelete
  12. 438 new
    287 price change
    248 sold

    7303 detached
    8717 attached.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Another good day. dare I say it, we have a trend developing

    389 new
    187 price reduced
    174 sold

    7320 detached
    8745 attached

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fish,
      Dont Say it. You gotta give it three to six months to get a good read on a trend.
      Me says that this is all setting up for a long slow decline in real estate prices on the Lower Mainland for the next two to three years. I just dont see it going any other way.
      Great Blog Fish.

      Delete
  14. 342 new
    181 price change
    200 sold

    7317 detached
    8765 attached

    ReplyDelete
  15. 390 new
    199 price change
    202 sold

    7328 detached
    8795 attached

    ReplyDelete
  16. 400 new
    254 price change
    226 sold

    7322 detached
    8768 attached

    ReplyDelete
  17. 412 new
    208 price change
    210 sold

    7330 detached
    8799 attached

    ReplyDelete
  18. Maybe there such a thing as QE infinity.

    ReplyDelete
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