Canadian Dollars Blog

If you're anything like me, you like a good deal. Valentine's day is tomorrow and everyone is out making dinner reservations and buying chocolate that will be half price tomorrow. So how does one enjoy Valentine's without breaking the bank? Here's a few suggestions 1. Buy chocolate the day after Valentine's day. All the pleasure with half the cost. 2. If you need to purchase roses, Loblaws has 12 long stem roses for $29.99. 3. From Redflagdeals, there is a promotion going on right where Diners in Toronto will be interested to know that you can get 2 for 1 entrees at any of these restaurants on Wednesdays until March 14, except Valentine’s Day.

CIBC WM made the announcement in its latest Canadian Portfolio Strategy Outlook report (PDF document) that it has made "a significant realignment in [its] equity portfolio this month by reducing [its] position in energy stocks from a 4.5-percentage-point overweight to a 3-percentage-point overweight," citing increasing risks linked to efforts by North American governments to reduce energy consumption and limit greenhouse gas emissions. There will be more buying opportunities later in energy and am keeping an eye on the markets as Energy drifts lower in the coming months.

Most Canadians are aware of the benefits of investing in an RRSP and take advantage of the opportunity to make regular contributions. However, relatively few individuals invest in a Spousal RRSP; as a result, the majority miss out on one of the few income splitting opportunities still available for Canadian taxpayers. So what is a spousal RRSP? It's the same as a regular RRSP, except that a Spousal RRSP is registered in your spouse's or common-law partner's you, as the contributing spouse, take a full tax deduction for all the contributions you make to the spousal plan. Deposits made to a Spousal RRSP cannot exceed your personal contribution limit. Your contribution can be made to a Spousal RRSP, your personal RRSP, or split between the two plans. Deposits made to a Spousal RRSP do not affect your spouse's RRSP contribution limit for the year. Now now you are probably wondering why should one contribute to a spousal RRSP? Well, the primary reason for establishing a Spou

There have been a lot of discussions on various blogs lately about the merits of saving for a RRSP vs. paying down a mortgage. As someone that has plans to purchase a family home in about 4-5 years, my situation is slightly different since I don't have a mortgage yet. While the home buyers plan will allow one to withdraw up to 20,000 to put towards the downpayment of a home is nice, I don't think it is realistically enough for someone living in Toronto. A detached home in Toronto will cost at least 350K. With that in mind, I am trying to diligently save as much for a downpayment as possible. The ideal situation for me is to accumulate about 200K for a downpayment. I believe that this is very possible if I save about 20K a year and my rate of growth is at 6%. So for my case, I think it makes sense to keep as much of my money outside of my RRSP as possible for now. There are some that argue that I should do both - maximize my RRSP and use the remaining amount to put toward

Seeking Alpha has an interesting article in which they talk about the increases in minimum wage throughout North America this year. Some of the legislation has already passed (eg. Ontario) and other provinces and states are quickly following suit. Industries facing higher labour costs would be most affected, while general retailers generally will outperform. I'm going to have a closer look at food and dollar stores in the next little while.

China is in the midst of a bubble. The Shanghai Composite Index, which is up over 130%, dropped 5% in one day after a Chinese official referred to the rise (perhaps best symbolized by Chinese homeowners who are taking out home equity loans to speculate in the stock market) as a bubble. The current face of China's investor is a crazed, irrational and manic one . Many are trying to cash in on the boom with little or no experience with investing. Despite all this, there's no doubt that China is growing fast with increased activity from U.S. private equity firms. Is the bull rising too fast and irrationally?

Business Week has published an interesting article , in which they ran a screen of the stocks of the S&P 500 to determine which ones are overvalued. Not surprising, a whole bunch of familiar faces appeared: GAP, GM, Wendy's, and Yahoo. Unless you strongly disagree with their analysis, the following stocks should probably be avoided in the near term: Avalonbay Communities (AVB) Bausch & Lomb (BOL) Block (H&R) (HRB) Countrywide Financial (CFC) Dollar General (DG) Eastman Kodak (EK) Gap Inc. (GPS) General Motors (GM) Janus Capital (JNS) KB Home (KBH) Lennar Corp. (LEN) Novell Inc. (NOVL) PG&E Corp. (PCG) Qwest Communications (Q) RadioShack Corp. (RSH) Sara Lee (SLE) Wendy's International (WEN) Yahoo Inc. (YHOO)

I decided to sell my position in 51Job ( JOBS ) which is a Chinese recruitment services company. The stock has been fairly volatile in the last few months. I managed to squeeze out a modest 8% gain for my troubles. Although I believe that job hunting services/sites in the Chinese market will be lucrative going forward, I believe that the increasing competition in this area will put a lot of pressure on 51Job. In order for me to get back into this one, I will need proof that their high margin online subsidiary will grow substantially as their print ad subsidiary hasn't been growing very robustly at all with the latter growing only 6%. Growth stocks need to grow. If they don't grow it's time to look elsewhere.