Investorial

If you haven’t heard, let me catch you up by saying that Bell Canada (BCE) recently announced that it is in leveraged buy-out talks with a consortium of Pension Plans (including Ontario Teachers Pension Plan) and private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). The stock price has been pushed up amidst the frenzy created by BCE’s senior management.

I couldn’t express my feelings on this any better than Mark Evans. Mark has been writing about the telecom industry for years. He lays out very nicely talkiing points that mirror my sentiments of this proposal.

But one thing is certain, in the age-old market system of buyers and sellers, both groups are always hoping to outmaneuver each other. To put it plainly, a buyer buys in hopes of profiting, so why would a seller sell if (more…)

A quick update on the various mash-up experiments involving social networking and stock picking since I last reported on it. TheStreet.com has bought into a venture founded in part by one of its writers, James Altucher. You can read about the StockPickr.com joint venture from James himself.

Two things of note. A contrarian investor like myself by nature does not subscribe to the theory of the “wisdom of crowds”. I didn’t sign up to try out the StockPickr service, because I don’t anticipate putting it to good use. Having a big backer in TheStreet.com will certainly catapult StockPickr to the top of the social stock picking offerings (more…)

Ever since I mourned the loss of Ameritrade Canada to the buy-out from TD Waterhouse Canada, I’ve been hot on their tail about lowering brokerage commission rates. I was remiss to have not blogged about TD Waterhouse’s new Active Investor commission rates policy, but it’s not too late to correct that oversight!

I’ll scrutinize the fine points of that policy to illustrate that TD Waterhouse has merely put forth a shell to fool customers. The only people able to take advantage of this policy are the really high net-worth account holders. < ?php if (is_home()) { ?>More analysis after the jump!< ?php } ?> (more…)

google-finance-logo.jpg"/>Am I being too harsh on a beta product? I don’t think so. Especially if Google wants to slap its name on a financial quoting system, it had better be at least as accurate as many of the existing stock quoting systems out there. That’s the bare minimum expectations. Google even has the gulls to seek an SEC review of stock quote fees.

Google Finance has finally and quietly integrated pre-2001 data into their stock charts. However, as my screen shots show, Google is still suffering from data inaccuracies. I revisited my previous example of a data inaccuracy, and was not surprised to find that it is still not resolved. As of this writing, Yahoo Finance correctly identifies the 52-week high of Tim Hortons (NYSE: TSX) to be $30.35, occurring on Nov. 22, 2006. Google Finance still stubbornly shows $33 as the 52-week high instead. More screenshots after the jump! (more…)

This article was original published at GuruWatch.org where I’m helping to contribute. Check it out!

Remember that comedy routine from Jeff Foxworthy? The one that starts with “you know you’re a redneck if ….”? I’m not that creative to create an entire list, but we can certainly start one about so-called financial gurus and keep adding to it, right? Let’s jump right into it!

You know you’re a guru if … you have your own learning annex seminar. The learning annex boasts speaker line-ups such as Donald Trump, Rich Dad Robert Kiyosaki, Suze Orman, and yes Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money fame. In this video from this past weekend’s seminar, you’ll see Jim recommend 5 stocks. In classic guru fashion, this is how he announced his recommendations:

“We want to win and there are winnings to be had [...] I need everyone in this audience to buy one share of these 5 stocks I’m about to mention. 1 share! 1 share will do it!”

(more…)

Irwin Michael is my favourite fund manager because of his no compromise, no spin, non-apologetic approach to openly discuss investing. He talks and writes candidly about his investment decisions; allowing me to soak up his perspective and learn from it. You won’t catch him doing any sweet-talking to appease investors and audiences. As of the end of August 2006, Irwin’s ABC Fundamental Value has averaged an annual 17.82% return for the last 15 years while it’s benchmark indes S&P/TSX Total Return has only managed a 10.79% in the same timeframe.

If you haven’t yet, you should start by reading Deep Value Face-Off - Part 1, and Deep Value Face-Off - Part 2 first! (more…)

Ross Healy is the chariman and CEO of Strategic Analysis Corporation, an investment advisory firm. Though I feel at times, that Ross’s comments are too politically correct, too on the fence, I still recognize that Ross is very much respected in the Canadian investment scene. Ross is best known for his bearish call on Nortel when it was trading over $100 in 2000. As of June 2006, Strategic Analysis Corporation’s model portfolio has outperformed the S&P/TSX Total Return index to a tune of 20.9% to 11.7% since its 1993 inception.

If you haven’t yet, you should start by reading Deep Value Face-Off - Part 1 first! (more…)

Canada’s Report On Business Television recently held a series of live broadcasts from BCE place in downtown Toronto. On Monday, September 18th, 2006, they invited two venerable deep-value fund managers in a question and answer forum. You might think I’m hypocritical for advising people not to obssess over ROB-TV while highlighting this event. However, my interest was peaked because of Irwin Michael’s appearance. I hope you will see why I listen when Irwin speaks. It’s truly a no-spin zone (unlike Fox News, or Jim Cramer) and investors get to benefit from his wisdom! (more…)