Investorial

Sometimes, you missed those really small ambiguous charges on your credit card and they may come back to haunt you. I finally caught on about an $11 charge on my credit card recently that was billed to WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS 800-7327031 CT. I do not remember this charge and promptly verified as to when it started. It was surprising to see I had not contested this charge since it started in November 2005.

This is an example where media information can be essential as various internet pages/posts/blogs helped me clarify the situation. The most informative one I found was a page on Adam Rosi-Kessel’s Fair & Balanced Weblog. Equally impressive was the information I found contained in the comments. This is a true testament to the conversational benefits of Blogs.

From the comments, I was able to determine that it was a previous purchase I executed on TigerDirect that led to this charge. After the purchase, (more…)

Finally, an ad-free aggregator for personal finance, real estate, and investing blogs! That’s the tagline for an innovative financial blog PFBlogs.org. If I remembered correctly, PFBlogs used to be a simple financial blog. Their transformation into a feed aggregator for financial blogs surprised me when I heard about it.

I really welcome PFBlogs’ efforts to unite all financial, investment and real-estate bloggers. PFBlogs is so comprehensive, that it can spell the end of Financial Blog Carnivals! I personally favour this format over blog carnivals (whom I have an unexplainable distaste). Blog Carnivals are weekly events where a different blog host site will make a post referencing all the different blog submissions of that week. Investorial has not participated in any previous financial blog carnivals.

I do see advantages to Blog Carnivals compared to PFBlogs. Bloggers will more likely submit their best posts to participate in the carnivals. However, I like the idea of being able to scan not just the ‘big boys’ but to sample all the less well-known Blogs for some hidden gems! I don’t mind taking the bad with the good as long as it is a complete view!

PFBlogs’ pledge to remain free of any advertising is admirable. I think most bloggers would not mind if they moved to a minimal advertising format on their webpage. It’s really the syndication feeds that will attract Bloggers like me, and that’s the format we will be leveraging. If PFBlogs ever decide to take up advertising, here are my suggestions!

• Restrict advertising for the blogs on your list! A feature financial blog of the week? Let them share their ad revenue with you to maintain the site!
• Combat feelings that being an aggregator gives you an unfair ad revenue advantage by instituting an opt-in, opt-out policy. So that only Blogs who don’t mind your aggregation remain on the list

P.S. To PFBlogs… how about allowing avatars/pictures besides those posts? Or maybe a ranking of sorts? PFBlogs might just become the technorati for financial blogs!

It’s only a matter of time when somebody exposes Principal-Protected Notes for the shady investment vehicle that it is. I’m glad that Duncan Hood was able to write a nice piece examining why Principal-Protected Notes (PPNs) are not a good idea.

In the end, I wouldn’t avoid PPNs just because they’re largely unregulated or because their “Information Statements” are so poorly written that even Glorianne Stromberg, a securities lawyer and former commissioner at the Ontario Securities Commission, admits she can’t understand them. I would avoid them because you can find better places for your money.

I first encountered PPNs approximately 2 years ago when CIBC partnered up with Mackenzie to introudce the FulPay series of PPNs. I’m not a historian of PPNs and don’t know exactly when these notes started, but their popularity are certainly a recent phenomenon. The financial industry’s marketing machine has again scored victory over the scarred pschye of the Canadian investor; successfuly reaching out towards their yearn for a “guarantee”. I say it’s a guarantee for you to overlook other investments vehicles that make more sense!

Remember this! When the industry introduces a new investment product, they are first thinking “how do we make money from this?” before they actually consider “how does this benefit the investor?“. And you can trust that they’ll always find a rationale, an angle to support this “benefit”.

By subjecting 70% of your PPN investment into a zero-coupon bond, you’re letting the bank borrow your money for their own investments on the cheap! We should always remember who has mastered the money game!

MoneySense.ca: “Protection racket: principal-protected notes” by Duncan Hood

The RSP season has come and gone. I had previously promised to blog about RSP advertisements and compiled a bit of information to that respect. I had prepared some materials about ING Direct, Altamira, Scotia Financial, the ROI fund and more.

However, I had a change of heart.

As more and more media came out to try and “help” consumers deal with the RSP season. I kept questioning why there was need for a “season”? Investing shouldn’t be about a certain 60 day period of the year! One of my friends even remarked that she thought “RSPs can only be bought during RSP season! I knew I had a lot of work to do here.

I decided that I did not want to be an influencing factor during this season. Self-publishing on the internet may be my hobby, but it also carries a responsibility. Whether I want to or not, the words that appear here may influence peoples’ decision. No disclaimer in the world can do away with my own guilt if I feel that I should not be blogging about RSP during the madness.

Now that this “season” is over, I do intend to blog about the material I’ve prepared. I also wish to discuss more about this seasonal mentality that we carry with us.

I haven’t gone off the deep end yet. Investorial is not a Blog about my own portfolio. I also don’t share the propensity to divulge my investment practices as other bloggers do. But I did enjoy reading The Dividend Guy and Investing Intelligently provide updates about their portfolio decisions.

The decision to not involve myself with posting portfolio updates is because the spirit of Investorial is to talk and discuss about media influences in the investment and financial arena. In my mind, it’s a conflict of interest to talk about my own investment practices.

However, I felt it was relatable to share with you that I have recently disposed of any seggregated funds in my portfolio. I used to have a small position in a seg fund that I bought at the beginning of my investing career. You can read my views about seg fund in this archived post.

This is neither an endorsement for or against seggregated funds, but a post about the fact that one shouldn’t jump into investments for the wrong reasons. I jumped into the situation while I was only starting to learn about investments, I was listening to friends and “advisors”. I was also less knowledgable and catch-phrases like “guarantee” were pleasing to a consumer like myself who only hears what they want to hear.

Arming myself with knowledge, I’m able to look back at my decisions and critique them. I chose to redeploy the invested capital and I’ve learnt to judge with a critical eye before leaping into action.

If you are a DIY Canadian tax preparer, The Frugal Canadian did a short but informative comparative review of some available options for you. I myself have always used QuickTaxWeb because of its comprehensive coverage of tax situations, but I’m looking forward to test-driving the other options that were unknown to me such as TaxFreeway and TaxWiz.

Let’s get one thing straight - Investorial does not seek to align itself with the mass media for the simple logic that you can’t criticize effectively what you are a part of! Surf quickly around the net, you will find various news, blogs, critiques of how the stock market abandoned Google and Yahoo. Shareholders rushing to sell because earnings per share missed by one penny. It’s utterly ridiculous for this media frenzy around the topic.

Yet, Investorial has stayed quietly on the sidelines. We were not the first to blog about the stock price rollercoasters of Yahoo, Google and we never will seek that title. What we like to do is find that article hidden within the mess which can expose the idiocy of the situation in such a simple way that it is a wonderous sight to behold!

What tickles us the most are articles that do not discuss numbers, do not talk about statistics but simply talks to a reader in plain English, and still achieves what all those analytical journalism could not. I’ll say again, Herb Greenberg is a genius!

So we are all looking forward to tax season right? (tongue-in-cheek) I wonder if Herb thought of this when he started writing about the Google speculators. Herb succintly leveraged this angle to put those speculators in their place; judging with common sense, and explaining his view so clearly to me that I couldn’t help cracking a smile at the end of those paragraphs.

I’ve deliberately left out the content because you should be the judge. I’m not sure if you’ll agree with me, but have a read for yourself. I also profiled Mr. Greenbereg in a previous post.

CBS MarketWatch: “Don’t Blame Google” by Herb Greenberg