{"id":5171,"date":"2018-04-13T05:12:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T09:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/?p=1574734"},"modified":"2018-04-13T05:12:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T09:12:26","slug":"five-things-you-should-know-before-starting-your-work-day-on-april-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/13\/five-things-you-should-know-before-starting-your-work-day-on-april-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Five things you should know before starting your work day on April 13"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Friday the 13th! Did you know that Thomas William Lawson, simultaneously a stock broker, stock manipulator and markets reformer, wrote a book in 1907 called Friday the Thirteenth? (No relation to the horror movies of the same name.) In Lawson’s book, a broker tries to bring down Wall Street. Let’s watch those markets today, folks. <\/sup><\/p>\n

STOP SHOPPING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadians have been warned to climb out of debt before it’s too late<\/a>. The president of the Credit Counselling Society says with debt loads at a record \u2014 thanks to low borrowing costs and rising home prices \u2014 and little in the way of savings, Canadians may be “caught off guard” if economic threats materialize. That could be a NAFTA deal going sideways, or a hike in interest rates, as the Bank of Canada plans to do twice more this year, or the end of those rising home prices.<\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/strong>: Phone calls to the counselling organization were up 5.3 per cent in the first quarter from a year earlier, Scott Hannah says, while online chats increased 40 per cent.<\/p>\n

STARK STATS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Young Albertan men<\/a> are the only demographic whose jobless numbers have continued to fall \u2014 and sharply \u2014 while employment levels for older men and women of all ages have almost recovered to pre-recession levels. Geoffrey Morgan<\/a> reports that StatCanada data show 67 per cent of males between 15 and 24 had jobs in the fall of 2014 when the province\u2019s recession began. Many companies use a \u201clast in, first out\u201d approach to layoffs and are looking to retain experience as they cut jobs.<\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/strong>: Today, just 55 per cent of men aged 15 to 24 are working, 12 per cent fewer than in 2014. Alberta\u2019s unemployment rate for males aged 15 to 24 was 14.6 per cent this March, versus the province\u2019s overall unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent.<\/p>\n

NO IMMUNITY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toronto’s swift and brutal housing plunge<\/a> cost homeowners millions. Prices fell 18 per cent in the first four months of 2017, a faster decline than in the U.S. housing crash. One brokerage crunched the numbers for 988 homeowners, and found that 866 had clinched a sale but couldn’t close, eventually selling later in the year for an average $140,200 less. Some buyers had to walk away as they couldn’t sell their own homes or the banks appraised the house for less than what they had agreed on. Another 122 sellers sold for an average $107,325 less than what they had paid earlier.<\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/strong>: “A speculative mood had hit Toronto, and was reflected in investors who thought they could make easy money by buying a safe and secure asset,\u201d Realosophy President John Pasalis said in a report. \u201c\u2026 the areas with the biggest decline had the highest percentage of investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

MANAGED MONEY<\/b><\/p>\n

Peter Hodson<\/a> has come up with five ways individual investors can beat the pros<\/a> at their own game, including that as they don’t work for bonuses, they can have a longer view for ROI than just a calendar year; they don’t pay fees; they have no high salary to justify, so they can “do nothing” if there’s nothing to be done. <\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/strong>: The Wealth Game<\/a> says that $10,000 invested at six per cent for 45 years, with 2.25 per cent fees, results in $85,230 lost to fees (you get to keep $42,416). Fund managers thus make more than two times what you do.<\/p>\n

SECOND BUD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Second Cup is joining the marijuana rush<\/a> with a plan to convert some coffee shops in Western Canada to dispensaries, Mark Rendell<\/a> reports. \u201cLet\u2019s say there\u2019s a Second Cup store doing $750,000 a year\u2026. That\u2019s OK, it will be profitable for Second Cup and the franchisee,\u201d said Michael Bregman, chairman of the coffee purveyor. \u201cBut let\u2019s say there\u2019s an opportunity to transform it into a dispensary that might do $5 million out of the same space \u2026 we\u2019d be crazy not to take a look at that opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/strong>: Second Cup’s shares rose nearly 30 per cent after the announcement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A handful of top business stories we’re tracking at Financial Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5172,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171\/revisions\/5172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}