rb

Actually the CIPF is in pretty good shape. It has about half a billion in reserves. Maybe that does not sound like a big number but it's significant when you consider the actual payouts. In the past 10 years it had to pay out about 15 million for 4 broker failures. Since inception in 1969 it paid out about 69 million for 21 broker failures. In this light I think that 1/2 a billion is quite adequate. The truth is that broker failures just aren't that expensive. It's really only client cash that's at risk in a failure and in some extreme cases some stuff around securities lending.

See if you trade with IB you actually can send trades simultaneously and get them executed at the same time. But as KCL said it's a moot point because at IB you can get good FX and don't need to bother with this nonsense. By the way. Do not send in market orders. A market order is just an invitation for someone to fuck with your trade. HFT boys love that. Once you send in a market order your market will dissapear if just for a split second, just long enough for you to get a shitty execution. You should always use limit orders, or if at IB they have some algos that look and feel like a market order but they're not. Honestly I don't even know what we're doing here, debating crappy brokers with crappy services and best ways to execute "gambits" pushed upon us by the aforementioned crappy service. Just get yourself a big boy broker that offers good services and know what their doing and you won't have to worry about that stuff again. Btw, for those that are worried about broker failure, as others have mentioned IB is conservatively financed, carries the standard CIPF protection and on top of it has extra insurance from Lloyds that guarantees accounts up to 3 million I believe.

Yea just because RBC has shitty systems doesn't mean that it's ok. Your unsettled buy trade and subsequent RBC journalling don't matter. When you're executing your sell trade you do not have the securities you're selling there's no ifs or buts. Whenever you execute a sell trade you have a naked short for 3 days. Bad in a margin, double bad in a registered. Behind the scenes RBC is probably lending you some shares from some omnibus account to balance things out, covers its ears, sings lalala and pretends it doesn't know anything.

Basically yes, you have to wait 3 days for the initial trade to settle. Otherwise what you're doing is effectively naked shorting on the second trade. However I do know that you can get away with it at certain bank brokers. Not because it's ok, but because their systems are so bad that they don't pick up on it. By the way, doing this in a registered account is double bad since you'd also be breaking a shitload of statutes.

Yes you can get around the FX with cross border arbitrage but it's a pain in the ass cause you have to get your broker to rejournalize the shares. The USD and CAD shares of the same company have different CUSIPs so they technically are not the same shares. There's also US dollar ETFs. They also involve rejournaling but the ETFs are kinda designed for that so it won't piss off your broker as much. About IB, there are no other fees than the $10 a month minimum that gets waved when you have more than 100k USD. The only other one is a 12.50 a quarter for registered accounts. I also forgot to mention that IB also has a bunch of really cool APIs that enable you to do a lot of stuff like create a custom platform or use it with excel. So if you have a separate data feed you can feed that into excel do all your in excel and execute your trades from excel. Pretty cool stuff.

I'll second KCL that there really isn't anything in Canada anywhere close to IB and I've tried a lot of them. The downsides of IB are market data fees and minimum account fees though I think some bank brokers are putting in minimum fees these days. The downside of other brokers are higher fees. Bank brokers will give you some free research if that's your thing. Another option is Questrade. They're an independent broker. They're fees are pretty low and no minimums. They charge 2% for FX but if you do a transaction of any size - maybe like 10k or more - you can call into their FX desk and get a better rate. Their execution and platform is just as bad as the bank brokers. I have all margin accounts and larger/more important registered accounts at IB and lower value/lower trading registered accounts (where I don't have to do as much) at Questrade.

Condo prices in the 416 are down by 8% from April to July. Edit: It is true that it has been the best performing real estate class during the period. Most likely benefiting from substitution because of lower price tag and people that can't perform NPVs on maintenance fees.

Yea but somehow they seem to get a win either way. On the Connie deal they got $593 million. Not bad for just showing up.

Meh, I guess they'll just buy all of Sempra during the next recession/market crash.

well i guess Berkshire's cash balance just went up by 270 million.

Honestly the event itself isn't that impressive. It's pretty much like you've seen on TV in documentaries or simulations. What I've found really interesting is the weird light you get just before/just after the event and how all of nature goes dead quiet all of a sudden.

When you get there rent a car. Figure out the path and drive along until you get clear sky.

+1 ..It's a bluff to try and squeeze Berkshire to pony up a bit more. Given that this has been playing out for four years already, time is not on Elliott's side. Oncor has already come out saying that should this deal fall through, any future offers from Berkshire would likely be for less than this time. Who knows, Buffett may relent and pony up a nickel more as an act of good faith, and can say "They wrung out the last nickel from us" and Elliott goes away happy(not). I don't think that BRK ponies up anything more. This is not just about value it's about setting precedent. BRK would rather walk away than pay more because if they pay more they'll have a bunch of Elliott types trying to vulch on all they're future deals. The nickel thing was for Mid-American and that was a transformative acquisition for BRK and I bet they really wanted it. Oncor is no such thing.... so not even a nickel.

I don't think Toronto in up 20% y/y. Also from now on you have to pay real good attention and parse the numbers. When numbers don't support the story anymore real estate boards will try to obfuscate the data.

These are all covered by private agreements which are kept secret. From what you're describing the agreement is probably like this: Lowes eats the 5 - that's what they pay to keep you tied to them and jams SYFs card down ur throat. In turn they do pay SYF a swipe fee but likely a heavily discounted one. SYF gets paid some and Lowes benefits cause you use your SYF card and they pay lower swipe fees than they would have if you used you visa instead.

They do make a % of everything you buy using the card. So you've probably made them quite a bit of money over the years. Yes they would prefer interest on top of it but it's not a deal breaker.

Ok, I don't think that you're gonna be able to do the 1 million red balloons. But what do I know, let's say that you can. I can foresee a few scenarios: 1. The Kim regime feels that it's loosing it's grip on power and lashes out. Cause fuck it, what does it have to loose? Then everybody dies. 2. The Kim regime is about to loose power or looses power. China decides that it's unacceptable for them to loose control over NK. China intervenes with force. A lot of people die and now you're in a confrontation with China and militaries are involved. Brilliant! 3. Let's say that our dreams come true and everything goes according to plan and North Korea somehow implodes from within ala Soviet Union. What happens to the balloon goodies now? Do they continue to fly in? What about the promises that the balloons symbolize? Does the US along with SK and JP stand ready to implement a Marshall like plan? Keep in mind that this will be way longer and complicated than Marshall plan because Germany had technology and shit. NK is a backwards third world. The commitment will be decades long. It will also be very costly. Will the US be able to remain committed through election cycle after election cycle? Cause if not you have a destabilized country full of angry people, armed to the teeth, that possesses a nuclear arsenal. And that's a really, really bad combination

How did that Iraqis are gonna love us once we take out Saddam work out?

I'm sorry, I really like some of DTEJDs posts, but this is very naive. Firstly, "be totally open with N. Korea. Allow their citizens to have a welcome in other countries". Here you're talking about refugees. Lots and lots of them. That's pretty rich from an American, especially a pro Trump American. Last time I checked you guys were very much against that sort of thing. There's even legislation pending to reduce numbers of them. So let me think of a polite way to say this.... it's a no go. Who's gonna take them? They're not threatening to nuke Germany. Also from the other side, there's absolutely no way DPRK will let them leave... so it's a cold dead non starter. Secondly, the happy balloons won't work either. The NK has enough artillery to shoot down all balloons coming in if they get pissed off (I guess for now they like the porn). If they get really pissed off they may shoot more than balloons. I'm talking mainly border villages skirmish type stuff. But one thing to keep in mind with all this NK stuff is that Seoul, a metro area of 25 million is in conventional artillery range of North Korea. That's one of the main complications of this situation. Any military conflict with NK results in massive death (millions) in Seoul. Thirdly, the bright side. China doesn't seem overly concerned about this shit. Pyongyang is about 800 km form Beijing (500 mi for our imperial friends). That's just a bit more than the distance between Boston and DC. Now, Obama has made good on his promise of ringing China and NE Asia with missile defense due to NK. There's a lot of missile defense out there. So if NK launches a missile there's what a 10% ( maybe 20 or 30?) chance that it makes its target? But the missiles that the US shoots back in retaliation I'm pretty sure would hit their target. Now let's get back to geography. If there was a good to fair chance that Boston would get nuked, I think that the people in DC would be freaking out and for good reason. Beijing, roughly the same distance as Boston and DC is not freaking out. Maybe we should take cues from them and relax. Oh, and one more thing, there is a twice yearly military exercise happening right now between US, SK and JP. Every time this military exercise happens Nk threatens to blow up half the world. So maybe we should all take a chill pill and step back from the fire and fury shit for a bit.

Well i can say what happens if we go full correction. We get another 10-15% drop over the fall and winter. Then it levels off for a while - 9 to 12 months - then you get another 10-15% leg down and then it says there for a few years. However it's really hard to say what will come to pass. Vancouver prices have been insane for a long time. Also, there are places in the world, like Australia, which have been at bubble levels for more than a decade. So it's very hard to tell where it goes from here. But I think after this episode, the bloom is off the rose so to say. I don't think there's much of a chance of a strong recovery from where we are. My personal view is negative. If the government follows through on their plans there will be massive tightening of credit for residential real estate come September (when this this is supposed to take off - per realtors). It's really hard to have a bubble without credit.

I empathize... But securities fraud and conspiracy unfortunately means that he's going to Club Fed. Would have been a lot of fun to get a social media feed of Shkreli in maximum security.

Yep at these levels they can afford to do 2-3 elephants over the next couple of years...... should the opportunity arise.

No flaws. You're right. Real estate transaction fees are ridiculously high. Pile on top of that the mortgage origination fee which is ridiculous as well, plus the wait time to get a mortgage approved. Agent commissions of 3% each way are insane as well. Btw, I say this as a Canadian. Up here transaction fees are crazy as well but nothing compared to what you guys have going on.

Maybe... but I'm hoping someone from our glorious west coast can explain to me how someone can qualify for a 1.5 million mortgage at 5% once B20 takes effect without being a serious 1%er

Yep! I can agree that that douchebag belongs in prison. Here's the depressing side of it tough -- it took 5 days of deliberation to find him guilty.