Gary and I frequent a website called Be Early, run by John Budden and Rob Snow, two personalities from Ottawa talk radio station CFRA.
It’s a bit of a mess of a website (for example, if you use Firefox, all of their embedded media files play all at once. Nice.), but there is invaluable information buried in that mess. Financial acumen does not always go hand in hand with expert web coding.
3 common themes:
- The US dollar is in trouble.
- Gold and other precious metals are a safe haven should currencies start to fail.
- “Discovery Investing” in small, well-run resource companies is fertile ground for massive returns.
Two items made my head spin from yesterday:
- 78 million baby boomers are nearing retirement in the USA (article). 25% of them have net worth of less than $50,000, meaning savings, equity in their house, 401k’s, etc. All of these people will be completely dependent upon US government social security to survive.
- The US government does not account for future social security obligations when they quote surplus or deficit figures. They report on a “current accounts” basis, money in vs. money out. Last report was a deficit of $248 billion, or $248,000 million. A scary figure, right?
Well, that’s like me quoting my financial situation today without referring to my house mortgage. Sure I have some money in the bank, but I owe the bank mortgage payments every two weeks for the next 25 years.
If the analysis is done including future social security obligations, the 2006 deficit is $3.5 trillion. $3,500,000 million. $3,500,000,000,000. That’s not their total debt, that’s just how much they fell short this year, if they were to fund future obligations properly.
I’m curious how Canada compares …
Anyway, if you are at all interested in investing for your future, this is a great website to lurk on. 3 areas get updated daily:
- Opinion, where a Dr. Michael Berry posts his daily commentary and investment ideas.
- Technical, where a chart du jour is posted.
- Blog, where further commentary is posted.
I really missed my calling. What am I doing in engineering? Should have went into finance …
Gary - I’ve been thinking the same thing recently Dan. I think Finance is the way to go, especially considering that the AVERAGE Christmas bonus at Goldman Sachs (investment bank) this year was over $600k. Several key traders got bonuses over $10 million.
Diane Belanger - It’s never too late Dan. You wouldn’t be the first person to turn one’s hobby into a business!