no_free_lunch

I have noticed over the past few days some issues with the price my orders execute at. It seems to be an issue only for canadian securities. What I am experiencing is that I put orders in at the listed bid (both for my online broker and yahoo finance which is real-time). The order doesn't execute. I then have to move up my order a few cents before I finally get a fill. For example, ALS.to was trading at $11.01-11.02. I put in a buy order for $11.02, no fill. Then $11.03, no fill. Finally at $11.04 I get a fill. However, when I go back and look, orders were executing between $11.01-$11.02 during that period where I couldn't get a fill. I don't even see any trades as high as $11.04 anywhere near where I purchased. I know there is something about an order maker but I thought that only applied if I tried to price below the ask.

VNO and FIH-UN.TO

Thank you gokou3. I bought a starter position and saw it was pulling from my USD balance. Based on what you have described it makes sense.

Stupid question. Is FIH-U.TO listed in USD or CAD?

Sold out of my fannie mae preferreds, FNMAJ. There is still upside but with US politics playing such a huge role and sitting on a 65% gain, I just decided to take it.

Added to GUD.to

Can you comment at all on RYCEY? Even with the pullback it doesn't seem that terribly cheap to me but I admit I don't understand the financials.

You would just enter trades in your fake portfolio in addition to your real portfolio. For a value investor who trades every month or two it wouldn't be too onerous.

Are there any websites that let you track an artificial portfolio and where you can make the results public? That would be the best and only way I can think of to cut through it all.

Yes, also an article in bloomberg. The message is getting out there. I think shares are up strong on Monday. I have no idea where they end up but if they are flat or down I am buying more. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-06/fannie-freddie-investors-get-key-win-in-bid-to-end-profit-sweep

MSGN.

There is always something like this going on with these companies, it never ends. In the short-term you are getting a 7.3% dividend, which is covered with no issues. Maybe they shut down vaping or maybe there is some adjustment to make it safer. If they shut it down, kids just start smoking again. I don't know how it all plays out but I am telling you, they are always, always under attack. They just keep making money in the meanwhile. For me, it's more an ethical issue. Do I really want to be investing in tobacco companies? I actually struggle with that more than the investment merits (not that it's a perfect investment but I am comfortable with the risks). In the very short-term I have overcome my ethical concerns.

MO. I think people should really look at this one. Yes there are risks, but I have watched the tobacco industry have a target on it since I started investing 20 years ago. They just push through it. I am just not sure if MO or PM is the better pick but went with MO as it is cheaper.

I agree with spekulatius. There are good individual names in europe, and to get a touch more specific in the UK in particular with it's big yields. On the bigger issue I think that demographics play a role, similar to Japan. If that's the case I could see there being stagnant growth for a long time. There are low growth stocks in Europe where you can still do okay in that scenario.

I didn't want to start a new thread and I have a few questions on IB. Does anyone here use them for their RRSP / TFSA? It seems they support that now. I am looking for something that will allow me to do trades on foreign exchanges, my current broker charges prohibitive prices ($200 per trade + forex charge).

Nice find allnatural. In the end, who cares. If anything this provided an opportunity to invest. Fannie isn't hurt by this. They will still package mortgages. They didn't have to raise capital today. In the end all that matters is what Trump admin does. Maybe this will serve as a reminder to move reform forward.

Thanks gokou. I did not know about these levies.

I tried with BRFRF (OTC version of BUR.L), I set my price about 1% over the london price but still couldn't get a fill.

TwoCities, my opinion is that interest rates are more tightly coupled to real estate than equities. It's standard practice to borrow to buy a house, quite rare in fact not to use debt. With equities it's much less common to use debt and really it's a dangerous thing to do. Maybe it's just that simple? I agree that if markets are efficient there shouldn't be such a divergence but perhaps markets aren't that efficient.

The total market cap was discussed earlier in the thread. It's literally about 3000 posts back. Not sure why you couldn't find it. ;) As I recall it was around $15B at par for fannie. That is the thing, given they need well over $100B in capital, the preferred's are a factor but they are not everything. You also need to provide the investors to be with some confidence that their property rights will be respected. Personally, I hold some high yielding preferred's so I am hoping they just retain the preferred's and pay out the dividend for the time being.

Well I will be getting a mortgage if this happens. I think boring slow to no growth companies with large dividends should do ok. Telecom companies come to mind. REITs could do ok. The dividend looks better and they can refinance at better rates. Really all equities are undervalued in this case but I really like dividends as I could see investors getting desperate and bidding them up. I think the hard question is what does this imply for economic growth.

I like the core BAM preferred's. There are higher up the chain as best I can tell so more diversification and safety on the dividend. In particular I am looking at BAM.PR.S right now. It gets adjusted quarterly, for better or worse and currently yields close to 7%. It would have to rise 50% to get back to it's high water mark in early 2018. Obviously that could take years (or a few months) but getting 7% (give or take) while you wait is not bad. The main risk is that we get into a europe type situation and the government yields drop down to near 0. However, you would still be getting 5%+ and that would be a good dividend in a 0 rate world, as long as brookfield can survive.

I feel I need to de-risk my portfolio a bit. Probably the best thing to do is simply move to cash. However, I have to ask if anyone sees any good puts for general portfolio protection? In other words, what is very overpriced, will get hammered in a general economic slowdown and has leaps available?

I don't think it will be no return but I wouldn't expect much more than inflation. Over 20 years though, inflation is going to cut your cash in half so that is something to think about. I don't worry about profit margins being peak, there are too many variables. Some industries are just going to have higher profit margins. Certainly you would never expect a middleman such as a retailer to have similar profit margins to some patent holding company. So if retailers start crashing and you end up with a greater percentage of higher quality companies then profit margins would move up in the indexes. You can see how that metric can be difficult to analyze. I do agree that the US valuations are high in general and that is the concern but it can remain like that for so long, look at the 90's. The question is, is it 1995 or 1999? Outside of the US, markets aren't expensive and the past growth has been very weak for over a decade. However it's a mixed bag as the government debt levels are very high. TLDR, it is complicated, stay invested but keep some money as a hedge.

My 3 cents is we don't need it and it degrades this site. I know people can ignore it but there are newcomers to this site and it has to be a turn off when they see half the posts are political rants with clickbait titles. Really, this site is attractive because of the insights into investment ideas, the politics are a waste. I have heard the argument that political discussion will happen regardless so we need to segregate it but is that true? I don't remember reading a lot of politics before that section started. It seems people are pretty good at self-moderating the threads. Even if some occasionally do slip into politics you didn't have such huge posting volume. I mean look at some of those threads, they are longer than most of the investing ones. I think it encourages politics by having it available as an option.