RichardGibbons

The call that he was talking about is so deep in the money that it wasn't selling at a premium.

I suspect the call buyer would exercise the call immediately, so you wouldn't get the chance to lend your stock.

There's no real need to refute those arguments because they are obviously blatantly partisan and trivially ridiculous, akin to the arguments of flat-earthers. It's like a fight with a three-year-old. The three-year-old will be full of sound and fury and may even think he's winning the fight, getting his blows in. But pretty well everyone else doesn't take it seriously and recognizes that there is no real threat. There's no need to knock out the three-year-old to prove that.

In case it's not obvious to you, the reason it matters isn't that it's money laundering in casinos. It's that the provincial government is making it one of their top five high-profile political issues. If a chunk of a business's revenue is derived from illegal activity, and the government says, "This is the particular illegal activity we're going to focus on and eliminate", then some might consider that news relevant to future of the business.

When you look at wealth (vs. income), Canada has a big "advantage" in that its two biggest real estate markets are in a bubble.

Well, yeah, if you don't actually care that Canada has better outcomes at 2/3rds of the price, doesn't have the massive numbers of underinsured people that USA does, doesn't have the huge number of deaths resulting from underinsurance, and doesn't have nearly the number of medical-related bankruptcies that USA does. That said, if you're really wealthy, then the American system is better for you. If you're playing the genetic lottery (i.e. being randomly assigned into the body of someone that needs healthcare), then the Canadian system is so superior that it's laughable that anyone would suggest otherwise.

I'm not a fan of wealth taxes, but there are few alternatives. In BC, because of foreign capital, we've ended up in a situation where the people who own the most expensive houses are declaring the lowest income. So, if you want to maintain your tax base, you have several options: [*]Increase the taxes the asset-poor Canadians pay in order to pay for the infrastructure used by wealthy foreigners who declare little or no income [*]Ban foreign investment & audit the heck out of people who buy expensive houses while declaring no income [*]Add an asset tax that will hit people even if they don't declare an income I think #2 is the most reasonable option, but #3 is far easier to do (and I think the NDP government would already be predisposed to doing #3.)

Yeah, it's unclear to me why anyone would bother seriously negotiating with Trump. He's capricious--even if Canada concedes on one point in return for USA conceding on another point, I'd be worried that the next day Trump would un-concede the USA side while demanding Canada's concession remain. There's no reason to hold serious discussions when that's the person on the other side of the table. So, I think the optimal strategy is to compliment Trump a lot, discuss all the talking points in depth and adjourn the meetings as much as possible, but not actually try to negotiate a deal. Essentially, just do what you can to keep the current agreement in place, but for actual negotiations, wait for the next guy since the next guy might want to negotiate in good faith.

Yeah, to change the world, you need to be like Bill Gates--old and well-educated. Wait a minute.... Never mind.

C-25 requires companies to disclose "diversity information" related to their board and leadership. I don't think that companies should be able to even ask about people's ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, and sexual preferences, let alone be required to disclose this information publicly. I generally don't think it's a good idea to create databases that make it easy to find business leaders of particular ethnicities to persecute. Plus, I've read articles where Liberals imply that if this law doesn't result in the "appropriate people" being hired, then the next step would be to enact laws to force companies to discriminate against particular demographics in favor of other demographics, which I also disagree with. C-51 mandates that in sexual assault trials only, the defence has to disclose their evidence to the prosecution before the trial begins. My belief is that this eliminates one of the primary defences a person can have against a sexual assault allegation, finding contradictions in the story of the accuser. Essentially, it allows the accuser to identify contradictions in their story before the trial and then revise their story to be consistent. What's more, I think trials should ideally be structured in the way that's most likely to identify truth. If this reverse-disclosure were a better way to find out the truth, I'd expect the Liberals to want this law to apply to all criminal trials. The fact that it doesn't--that it only applies to sexual assault trials--to me means that they aren't actually trying to find truth, but rather make it much easer to find people guilty of sexual assault. Thus, I think it eliminates the right to a fair trial. (Since men are the primary people charged with sexual assault, I consider it sexist enough to group with the other two bills.) C-69 says that, when performing environmental assessments, both science and "the traditional knowledge of indigenous people" must be considered, and the indigenous people's knowledge may be kept confidential. I believe strongly that science should be the only factor in environmental assessments. To me, traditional knowledge does have a role, and that role is to be fed into science, proven or disproven, and then the resulting science incorporated into the environmental assessments. Instead, a minority group consisting of roughly 4% of the population is being allowed to influence the results of environmental assessments, and the information that they are providing isn't even being made public. Generally, I think it's a really bad idea to identify a group based on ethnicity, pass laws to give them a disproportionately large influence on regulation, and then say that nobody else can know how or why they influenced any decision.

Oops, I was in a rush and misspoke--I didn't mean to imply that it was this council. I'm mostly referring to bills C-25, C-51, and C-69.

Yep, this is the reason I won't vote Liberal in the next federal election. To me, adding systemic discrimination to federal laws is a non-starter--if your party tries that, nothing else you do will convince me to vote for you.

Yeah, they should totally look into how much money the Green Party has got from foreign interests--the amount would be negligible, since they don't accept corporate or union donations. And, to be even-handed, they should also look at the piles and piles of money donated by foreigners to Wilkinson's party during the last elections. I'm curious if it's 100 times the amount donated by foreigners to the Greens, 1000 times, or more. The Liberals really tried hard to keep corporate donations in politics while the Green Party campaigned against it. Even so, I don't think the Liberals should be persecuted as you suggest, because it wasn't actually illegal, and because I believe in democracy. That said, it amuses me when you think the argument you're making is pro-Wilkinson/anti-Weaver, when the exact opposite is true. I'm guessing that you're in an Alberta echo-chamber, and that's why you get so many basic facts related to BC politics wrong. (Remember last year when you thought the BC Liberal party was liberal? LOL. It's nice that you've finally realized that they're actually the party you'd vote for if you lived in BC.)

Yeah, I find the article bizarre. It seems like he's trying to vilify corporations, alleging that they're doing something wrong, when as far as I can tell, they're simply following the law. What's more, the ethical thing for the corporations to do is to operate in a tax-efficient manner, not paying more than required (and depending on how they paid more than required, I imagine it might actually break the law to pay more than required.) Really, if the author has a problem, he ought to be complaining about elected officials who create the laws and give in to corporate lobbyists, not the corporations who simply follow the law.

Yeah, I agree, and I think it's a extremely strong statement saying "anyone from the west". If a western investor believes in the concept of a "too hard pile" and that companies go in there when the true fundamentals of the company are too difficult to understand, I'm hard pressed to understand why they wouldn't put almost every Chinese company in that category. I do understand speculating without confidence though.... :)

That's super helpful! Thanks, EliG.

That number isn't actually what they're asking for. According to this CRA link, for property held in an account with a Canadian registered securities dealer (section 7), they want the "maximum fair market value during the year". Most of the time that value will be an intraday value. It can only be calculated by recalculating the value of your account when the price of any foreign security in it changes, then figuring out what value is the highest (i.e. it requires taking into account millions of data poinnts and is basically impossible for anyone to calculate except maybe a brokerage). That said, I basically do what you do. But it frustrates me that they're asking for information that's almost impossible to calculate and then making me assert that the number is accurate.

Yeah, I've filled it out. It frustrates me because it's an ask that's super hard to do accurately.

I use multiple brokers because: 1. 2008 proved that big, well-respected brokers can fail. 2. Investor protection (CIPF) is capped at $1M. 3. Even if investor protection were unlimited, I imagine the payout wouldn't be quick. It would be annoying and stressful waiting to get access to my money if I had it all at one broker that failed. Richard

It's probably about a year ago, but one thing that completely uprooted one of my beliefs about the world was Hans Rosling's analysis of population growth in . I believed that world's population will grow indefinitely, eventually resulting in fierce competition for resources. The video has a bunch of really interesting information, but the most noteworthy is Rosling's argument that the world's population growth will flatten out over the next few generations. If something more recent is required, I have to go with politics (apologies for introducing that topic, but this is a big shift in perspective for me). Bills C-25, C-51, and C-69 have convinced me that Canada's Liberal government is implementing discriminatory laws, and therefore has to go.

This is a pretty awesome perspective. So if I'm getting what you're saying, it's totally okay for anyone who owns a construction company to burn down your house, since they will have created net positive houses in the world. It's okay for a woman who's had a bunch of kids to commit a few murders, since she's created a net positive for human life. Oh wait, I misunderstood. What you are actually saying is that there should be no consequences to someone burning down your house because there's a chance in the future that they might build more houses. I find it interesting you could have looked at these cases said, "These people broke the law and faced the consequences. Now we have to fix the system so that everyone faces the consequences, not just those who thumb their noses at power." Instead, you say, "These people broke the law but because they might contribute to the world, they should not face consequences." (In a way, that's the most left-wing suggestion I've heard on these forums--anybody should be able to break the law without consequences because they might do something later that is a net positive for the world.)

Yeah, I think this is a great example of the unpredictability of the effects of climate change. I mean, someone who's ignorant about meteorology might believe that high temperatures are the only factor that impacts the strength of hurricanes, when other factors like wind shear are just as important. Similarly, changes in wind patterns and changing ocean currents can dramatically affect where hurricanes will appear. So, I think you're right, Cardboard. Climate change results in unpredictable changes around the world--hurricanes, flooding, and droughts. Since it's hard to do prediction accurately, there's value in reducing CO2 emissions to slow the rate of change to reduce the massive negative impacts of climate change and allow the models to catch up to the impacts of climate change on our world.

My general thought on LEAPs is that there ought to be a way to use them reliably to get unusually large returns. My reasoning is that LEAPs are largely priced based on the volatility of the underlying rather than the fundamentals of the business. Thus, if one finds a sufficiently undervalued business, the business ought to be more likely to have higher future volatility on the upside than the downside. Thus, if you can find such businesses that have LEAP calls with low implied volatility, those ought to have above average returns. That said, that's how it works in my head, but I haven't implemented that strategy yet. (Partly because it's a lot of work, and it's mentally draining doing options investing because, done right, I think you get a bunch of small losers, and a few big winners.)

I've bought leap puts on UVXY in the past, though mostly just out of the money, and typically, after paying for the spread, have made small returns. In general, I haven't done deep out of the money UVXY puts because when I do the math it doesn't seem like they will pay off very much (but I haven't looked at it in years). I think that you can probably win with them, but closing them could be a challenge. The problem is, if you close them early, then you don't get the full impact of the contango and the spreads can be high, both of which impact your returns. If you close them late, you're risking a 100% loss if the market moves against you near expiration. So, historically, I concluded that it was probably profitable, but not worth the effort and the taxes. If you try it (or even model it), and find different results today, I'd be interested in hearing about that. Keep in mind that we've just finished one of the most low-volatility run-ups in history, so it's a bad idea modelling the decay of UVXY based exclusively on that. Though having volatile volatility is actually good for a short UVXY position, I suppose. With higher volatility of volatility, you might get lower gains from contango, but more gains from losses in UVXY due to fluctuations in a leveraged ETF. (It's also worth noting that I've owned large positions in SVXY in the past, but ditched them when the VIX fell super low, and I realized that there was a real possibility of a 100% loss on a volatility spike.)

I don't think that the SVXY volatility options were nearly as obvious a bet as you think. They are hugely path-dependent. In other words, if implied volatility goes from 10 to 30 in 10 days, it's a very different outcome for SVXY than if it goes from 10 to 30 in one day (like the difference between SVXY falling to 90 and SVXY falling to 12). In fact, I think that the only reason SVXY is trading around 12 now is because hedge funds manipulated the VIX futures to ensure that on the one bad day, SVXY would fall to 15 rather than 60 (immediately after the market closed--in the 15 minutes before SVXY was valued--the VIX futures spiked to 37, and then immediately fell back to the high 20s, basically ensuring that SVXY would do far worse than it would've done if it were priced when the market closed). What's more, when you're holding the SVXY puts, you're not just suffering time decay on the options, but dealing with the growth in SVXY itself as a result of the contango in the futures. So, I think leap puts on SVXY was not at all an obvious bet.