So I applied for an E*Trade account a few weeks ago and I was wondering what was taking so long. I got through to customer service today after just a few minutes and asked them. They have received my application, but they haven’t processed it because I made the RRSP beneficiary (my wife) sign as the witness to the RRSP beneficiary section as well (is that so wrong?) Anyways, when were they going to tell me that? So now they’ve put the application through and my account will be opened soon. I guess it would take a lot of time for them to phone every person who filled out their application forms incorrectly, but to send out a quick email? Not hard… they have my email address, as the guy I talked to just resent the application so I can fill out the RRSP beneficiary section. Took him 2 minutes tops.
Popularity: 6% [?]
The Canadian Capitalist once again posted the results of his sleepy portfolio, the portfolio he constructed using only passive index funds, which he uses as his own personal benchmark to which he can compare his own performance. Based on the sleepy portfolio’s stellar performance, I wonder if he’ll stop investing in individual stocks so much in the future and invest in more passive index ETFs instead.
This is basically the type of portfolio that I want to switch over to gradually. All passive index-passed. I’ll probably switch over slowly though, I don’t want to sell my mutual funds just yet. Selling now might get me back in the mentality of selling things and chasing returns which I used to do before. I’ll start by putting all the my new cash contributions coming in into index ETFs, then when the mutual fund parts get small enough I might get rid of them.
Popularity: 10% [?]
I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0.5 today. So far so good. While I was at it, I disabled the siFR stuff that gave me fancy headings (provided by the CG-FlashyTitles plugin). It was slowing page-loading time down a lot. I had always noticed the slowdown but didn’t bother to measure it until now. In some cases disabling brought the page-load time down to 5 seconds from 10 seconds. I also disabled the Visual.SpellCheck because Firefox 2.0 has built in spell-checking for text boxes.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Many months ago, I saw this blog post about a Monte Carlo investment simulator. I liked it right off the bat because rather than giving exact answers, it gives probabilities of outcomes instead. You can read more about Monte Carlo method at Wikipedia.
A few comments about their simulator:
- At first I was annoyed that I couldn’t specify my estimated nominal return on my investments. But then I thought, well, they have probably determined the average return of a conservative portfolio over the past few decades and so its probably better that I don’t have the power to change it, otherwise, I might be prone to use an overly-optimisted return
- They use 4.83% as an expected inflation rate, which “corresponds to the average inflation rate for the period of 1974 to 2004″ according to their instructions on their website. Isn’t that a bit high? The most I have ever heard quoted is 3-4%, but almost 5%?
- I noticed that there is no way to specify a monthly cash flow into an asset. It turns out that any leftover surplus in the cash-flows tab will get transferred into assets (in the same proportion I assume).
I have been playing around with it for a while today and I plan on fine-tuning it a bit more. There are also a few other simulators that the blog post above mentions. Not sure how many of those are free though.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Just did a quick upgrade to Wordpress 2.0.4 today. Everything seems to have gone smoothly. The most annoying part was merging in the update to the default theme with my changes to the theme.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Just found out about an interesting little webapp called SaneBull. Check it out. You can drag the boxes downwards (click on it then use the wheel on your wheel-mouse, it’s a lot easier) seemingly off to infinity and potentially create a massive page of stock news and various things. I don’t think the name “sanebull” was the smartest choice, but whatever.
Update (2006-09-07): They have totally crippled their service. You can no longer have multiple windows open.
Popularity: 5% [?]
We just got back last Sunday night from our 2 week vacation in Cuba. What an interesting country! Since this is a financial blog, I will give you the financial scoop on Cuba:
- Cuba has two currencies: the National Peso (MN) and the Covertible Peso (CUC).
- US Dollars have not been accepted anywhere since November 2004
- If you exchange US Dollars into any other currency you will pay large surcharges
- If you ever go to Cuba, take as much cash (CAD or EUR) as you can. Doing a cash advance on a credit will cost an extra 11-12% surcharge as well as a $6 fee for each transaction back hom
- There are many items and stores that only sell things in national pesos. But these places are meant for Cubans, Cubans that work for low salaries as part of a communist society. Do not listen to the Lonely Planet and try to get deals by paying in pesos nationales (movie theatres, Copelia, street food, etc…) Try to pay a fair amount in CUC, or often paying CUCs on par (while 25 times more expensive) is actually a more reasonable price to pay for a tourist.
- Cuba is evolving in to a two-tiered society: those who have money (ie. tourist dollars) and those who do not, since Castro allowed Cubans to have bank accounts (initially in US Dollars, now in CUC) and allowed more tourism and allowed for some self-employed occupations (bed & breakfast, paladares, etc…).
- Cost of travel: In casas particulares, we paid $25/night in Habana including breakfast plus $5 each for dinner. In Vinales and Cienfuegos it was $30/night + $3 each for breakfast + $7 each for dinner and in Trinidad it was $20/night + $3 breakfast and $7 dinner. In other words, it’s pretty cheap there. The most expensive thing is the airfare but at the end of the day for the 2 week vacation it is still cheaper than an all-inclusive resort and the food is FAR better and you can still go to the beach whenever you want.
- Many menus, especially those as lunch/snack type places list the weight of the food! So you know exactly how bit something is compared to everything else on the menu. Neat eh?
Well that’s all I can think of for now, if I can think of any more interesting facts about Cuba on the financial theme I will add them.
Popularity: 5% [?]
It’s almost vacation time again for us. I just bought 2 flights to Havana last weekend for June. The flights are expensive, about $1000 each. We will be going budget once in Cuba though, staying in Casa Particulares, eating in Paladares, and taking the bus. It will be cheaper than an all-inclusive resort. I decided not to use Air Miles for our flights by the way (even though I said I might), because I decided to assume the higher $0.16 or $0.2 valuation for the Air Miles. I think they will get used for sure within the next year for flights to Calgary. We already know we will be going to a wedding in Canmore next January for a weekend and Air Miles are worth about $0.23 on flights to Calgary.
Since our last vacation, in October 2005, we have been saving about $600-700/month towards vacations. That amount is automatically transferred at the middle of every month from one of our chequing accounts into an ING account. We did this because we both have full time jobs and we both get 4 weeks of vacation per year now and we want to be able to use it. We have no kids right now, but we will eventually, and we want to make sure we take advantage of this post-marriage pre-children period. We are maximizing our RRSPs and slowly but surely paying off the student line of credit and putting away some more money for a rainy day so I think we can afford it. Last but not least, we just need a vacation!
Popularity: 9% [?]
I was just playing around on Google, searching for my blog’s name and I found this: BlogShares. Interesting site. It’s just what it says, a “fantasy blog stock market.” So far 80% of my blog is owned by Gary LaPointe. Weird. His picture looks straight out of an ad for one of those stock trading systems, like Wizetrade (actually that was the one with the soccer kid, never mind).
Gary – Proud fantasy owner of Investing Intelligently
Popularity: 5% [?]
Just found about a great new website that helps people track conversations on blogs. It’s called co.mments and after you do the standard user registration, it’s really easy to use through the use of bookmarklets. I think I might just add a “Track this post with co.mments” on my blog.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Recent comments