It’s Monday Night! The best night to take your mind off investments and finance by watching wrestling entertainment on television. But I did not imagine how wrestling and value investing could come together so interestingly!
John Bradshaw Layfield plays a rich tycoon heel on WWE’s SmackDown! For those who don’t know the term, a wrestler is a heel if he plays the bad guy. Imagine my surprise when I saw who the author was for an article about value investing at TheStreet.com.
In the article, JBL (as he’s called) talks about 2 …

Do good value Stocks have to be from good businesses or good companies? Most value investing gurus will make the case to search for a fallen company that is fundamentally a good business. However, my favourite fund manager - Irwin Michael suggests the contrary as is his nature. I always enjoy Irwin’s writing, not because of his tremendous track record, but because I am opened to new ideas for value investing through his logical analysis of common stocks for uncommon return.
I don’t forget about a stock when I sell it. …

[...] My perspective, I don’t think “Money makes happiness”. There are many people with money that are not happy. Instead, I submit that “Lack of money makes you sad”. No matter what your dream of a lifestyle is, if you do not have the funds to make it a reality, you will not be happy. Do you agree?

MoneySense.ca has a new article introducing Seggregated Funds (aka Seg Funds). Read the article if you want to know what is a Seg Fund. I want to use the article to talk about the age old concept of paying for a guarantee.
I have never been a promotor of Seg Funds. There is certainly a niche that it can fill; a small niche in my opinion. For some people, it is necessary to employ Seg Fund as a strategy due to its creditor protection abilities and their aversion to risk. …

I live in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and am one of the believers of the existence of the GTA real estate bubble, and its eventual burst. The real estate bubble is unlike the stock market bubble because there is no central marketplace. Bubbles exist in different areas of North America with varying degrees of severity. Investorial will be monitoring the big picture of the real estate situation as well as the Canadian and GTA scene.
Most analysts agree that low historical interest rates have been the primary driving force for …

MSN Money contributor MP Dunleavey writes about her experience blogging about personal finance issues. She was mildly surprised by the enjoyment of the experience. MP discovered an online community of women, Women In Red, who blog and discuss about their personal financial issues and situations. They support and encourage each other, learn from the collective knowledge of the community. It’s great to see blogging put into such applications!
MSN Money: ‘Blogging Towards Financial Sanity’ by MP Dunleavey

There is a lot of focus in the Canadian financial services industry on income trusts lately? Ever since the late 2000 market crash, income trusts have been the darling of Canadian investors, promising tax efficiency and steady cashflow returns. However, the last few months have seen more turmoil for the asset class. Here are a few recent articles for your reading enjoyment

Heating Oil Partners - 1st Canadian Income Trust to file for bankruptcy
Canadian Finance Minister to review income trust structure
Globe & Mail article about income trust taxation review

Many companies such …

Did you hear this? In an effort to build an in house production studio for movies based on its comic book characters, Marvel essentially mortgaged 10 of its comic intellectual property for a revolving credit line of $525 Million dollars. In return, the financier Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp secured film rights to 10 Marvel characters.
Marvel was tired of sharing profit with other companies. They collaborated with Sony, in a sour deal turned lawsuit, during the “Spider-man” series. The financing deal worked out very well for Marvel. I guess …