Financial Planning, Investment & Insurance Solutions

  • Lessons From Transitory Inflation

    Lessons From Transitory Inflation

    Toward the end of October, Australia’s bond market received a surprise. For most of the first half of the year the Reserve Bank of Australia had been buying up 3 year dated bonds in an attempt to suppress yields and keep them around the 0.1% level. If bond prices are bid up, the yields fall and vice versa. This had been successful until June, when the RBA suddenly started pulling back from the market and the 3-year yields, which play a role in fixed mortgage rates, moved sharply from the 0.1% to 0.4%. Yields again trended downward until September when…

    Read more: Lessons From Transitory Inflation

    Topics:

  • Take This Job & …

    Take This Job & …

    Hamilton, Ontario. It’s August 2021 and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rolls into town for an election campaign speciality. Standing with a young couple near an under-construction house to announce a new policy aimed to help young people get into the market. Suddenly, a loud voice from the crowd cuts through the façade of the campaign speech. “You had six years to do something. You’ve done nothing,” a young man shouts. “These houses are worth $1.5 million. Are you going to help us pay $1.5 million? Are you, buddy?” The man is quickly cornered by Trudeau’s supporters and persuaded to…

    Read more: Take This Job & …

    Topics:

  • Dopamine Nation

    Dopamine Nation

    Addictions can be the bane of our modern existence. Getting hooked on something can be quite easy and not readily acknowledged. The range of addictions can stretch from the extreme such as narcotics, to the very simple such as checking the news on a phone. They can be a mild irritant, an imagined way to temporarily blow off steam, or a life altering and ongoing disaster many struggle to escape from. What plays a role in forming addictions? Dopamine. Psychiatrist and Stanford University professor Anna Lembke explores the role dopamine plays in our lives in her new book, Dopamine Nation: Finding…

    Read more: Dopamine Nation

    Topics:

  • 2021 Q3 September Quarter Review

    2021 Q3 September Quarter Review

    Economic Overview Labour and supply shortages, shipping bottlenecks, COVID delta variant, inflation, vaccine hesitancy. There were plenty of worries in Q3, but markets remained mostly positive across the quarter as economies continued to open and society resumed some normality. This led to an increase in demand in many areas and a struggle to supply that demand. Something governments, businesses and central banks will be dealing with in the year ahead. In the US, the Fed Reserve stated tapering of quantitative easing will be announced at the November meeting and will finish by mid-2022. Interest rate expectations also moved higher. The…

    Read more: 2021 Q3 September Quarter Review

    Topics:

  • YourSuper Comparison, Super Bad

    YourSuper Comparison, Super Bad

    Australia’s worst superfunds have finally been placed in the village stocks for all to see. The YourSuper comparison tool was released earlier this year, it offered investors the ability to sort through various super fund options who have a MySuper default option and compare fees and returns over a 7 year period. While the tool has been available for use for a few months, it was only last week that funds were categorised on their investment performance. Either “Performing” or “Underperforming”. This kicked off a flurry of excitement in the media about who the worst were and how the members of those…

    Read more: YourSuper Comparison, Super Bad

    Topics: