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OT - The Investment Thread

WellPlayed

WellPlayed

Well-known member
So every once in a while one of the politics or news threads goes into investments. I'm just hitting a point in my life where I will have some disposable cash to throw around so that I don't have to work for every dollar I make. Always interested to hear where people are putting their money.

So have at it. Stocks, bitcoin, specific industries, real estate, businesses. Where are you putting your cash?

I'll start. A family member built a personal storage business from scratch. I own a minority %. It's expanded every year since he started it, and cash flows beautifully. Some regular work but mostly passive, and you can hire someone to manage part time. Offers roll in each year to purchase for double to triple whats been put in and plans are to expand again. Need alot of cash or some investors to start it though, and it helps alot if you act as your own contractor when building (family member handled all subcontracting, permits, etc.). It's done better than I could have ever imagined, the amount of junk people hang onto is shocking.
 
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I've been boring and have put most of my stuff into ETFs. I used to have an investment advisor, but got fed up with fees, fed up with Mutual funds, and doesn't help that she picked a stock that tanked, so that 7k loss (in an RRSP so I can't even get the capital losses from it) just hurts. I know the ETF route isn't going to magically make me a millionaire through investing, but as of now seems like the safest choice to avoid fees and just ride the general stock market wave.
 
If you are looking at real estate you can find some great deals outside the city where things are still undervalued. You can buy a house in Barrie/Innisfill/Hamilton/Brantford/East Gwillimberry/Oshawa until the last few months for 200-300k, and rent it out at a rate that easily covers your carrying costs. People are moving out there because its impossible to enter the market in Toronto. I would avoid buying speculatively. Right now you'll make a killing, but as discussed in the other thread who knows if/when a correction would happen. Once you increase your equity, as your tenants pay your mortgage and property value increases, you can get a line of credit against the house at prime plus half and use it to buy another one. The interest on investment is a tax write-off. Short term if you are lucky you can do really well. Long term I think its a great play.

Also weed. I've put a bunch into that industry. That is purely speculative.
 
nothing wrong with ETF, for example Vanguard ETF doing pretty good over the long run.
ETF is best solution for ppl who do not like their own ETF maintenance and want to keep it simple.
most annoying thing is though - government wants it's share of your investment profits.
lowest tax is for dividends so probably better to stick with equities with dividends but from other hand it is hard to diversify portfolio for Canadian equities as choice very limited.
for past year Canadian equities doing very good and it is not hard to get 25% growth on those but that can change any day.
from other hand for long term investment holding 10-15 tickers from .TO can bring steady stream of div cash and some growth

say you put 1 mln , each quarter you have $1 per share, say you have 10k shares $100 per so u are getting 40k per year - tax on divs
 
If you can buy, fix up, then sell, you're better off, IMO, than buying rentals.
I say that basically because you just can't 100% guarantee what kind of renter you get, or the potential legal drain if things go sideways.

In my area...Simcoe County, there is still money to be made;
 
Bleedsblue&white said:
If you can buy, fix up, then sell, you're better off, IMO, than buying rentals.
I say that basically because you just can't 100% guarantee what kind of renter you get, or the potential legal drain if things go sideways.

In my area...Simcoe County, there is still money to be made;
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yeah. I think 2017/18 is year of Simco County, lots of room to go up
 
CRL said:
yeah. I think 2017/18 is year of Simco County, lots of room to go up
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I dont think there's a lot of value in barrie right now. I think we're starting to enter real Estate bubble territory there.

I own a house in barrie and it's value has gone up about 250k in 5 years.
 
MindzEye said:
I dont think there's a lot of value in barrie right now. I think we're starting to enter real Estate bubble territory there.

I own a house in barrie and it's value has gone up about 250k in 5 years.
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problem is that Barrie is only place close to TO which is still have subdivisions building up which drives prices up coze ppl want to jump in into still affordable new house
 
I just buy stock and stick in a TFSA once I've done my research. It's all value investing these days ... no time to monitor speculative stuff.

Real estate ... wouldn't touch it these days unless you're prepared to ride out a crash (i.e., a decade).
 
Speaking of mutual funds, anyone used Wealthsimple? Finally starting to have a little money to invest and I like their MO.
 
Ya I'm a value invester. But I read the Economist and try to use broad market trends to guide me. I avoid petrochem because I've been burned there too much. Also avoid small caps and low volume trading equities cause I've been trapped without buyers on occasion.
The storage centre investment sounds awesome, and I'd like to do something more brick and mortar along those lines.
 
But to be honest over the course of 10 years or so my investment performance is probably not much better than I would have achieved with well chosen ETFs. But equities are more fun.
 
Deckie007 said:
Speaking of mutual funds, anyone used Wealthsimple? Finally starting to have a little money to invest and I like their MO.
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Yeah, the MO is fine, but you can basically follow the same plan on your own.

Open up a questrade account and follow the Canadian Couch Potato plans and just pick the 3 main ETFs to invest in and you're good.

WS is about .5% fees, doing it on your own is probably like .15%. But if you don't quite have the patience to do your own investing and keep it balanced, then wealth simple is a pretty solid service.
 
Does anybody have any good advice/resources for someone that has never invested? I'm still relatively young but I'm now comfortable enough in my career that I'd like to start learning about investing. Any books or websites geared towards Canadians? doesn't have to necessarily be just for Canadians.
 
Questrade is great.

Credit card churning is better. I've made at least $20,000 in cash and travel rewards from this over the past year or so. It's kind of scary easy in a too good to be true kind of way. Except it's actually true.
 
CRL said:
problem is that Barrie is only place close to TO which is still have subdivisions building up which drives prices up coze ppl want to jump in into still affordable new house
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Yeah, no; Bradford has a huge expansion under way, and Tottenham and Beeton are both in subdivision mode, and of course Alliston is always growing.

Barrie is right on the 400, but there are lots of places building houses in the area.
 
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