Uccmal

Hi John, In so far as I am biased and prepared for a downturn, I suppose. I was prepared by the summer of 2007 the last time. I got caught off guard over a year later when I thought the worst had past and did some stupid investments on the way down. Washington Mutual comes to mind as one. With inflows like what we are seeing into an overvalued stock market, things IMO are getting dangerous. Part of the problem is outside of oil cos. I am not seeing any value. And I am tentative with oil because it will get pulled down in a market crash, recession scenario. People have forgotten, as usual, how fast and how badly things can turn. As usual I am probably early but in this case it doesn't really matter. I am not losing any opportunity cost. Snapping up a bunch of blue chips in a downturn when their yields go above five or six percent is worth the wait.

Article by Joe Nocera in Blomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-25/index-funds-are-finally-sexy-what-a-shame "ETFs have gathered more than $2.7 trillion in assets today, of which around $400 billion is held in the three biggest S&P 500 ETFs (one of which is Vanguard's). But as SeekingAlpha noted recently, in March "$484 billion worth of these ETFs changed hands" — a turnover of 121 percent in one month. "This is not the action of buy and hold investors," the author concluded dryly. Indeed, it’s not. If you look at fund flows, you’ll see that when the market dips, as it did early last year, money pours out of index funds — only to pour back in once the market is climbing again. In other words, just as they had in the days of hot funds and hot stocks, too many investors are buying high and selling low. Except this time, they are doing it with index funds." When the market finally starts to correct index funds and etfs are going to amplify the correction. Just as this bull market has gotten way ahead of itself, the downside is going to be equally severe. Buffett and Bogle are right to recommend them but they work on the assumption that people will buy and hold an index fund forever. Their straw human behaves this way but real people acting on mass in a panic dont.

A house 3 doors down from mine just sold for 1.15 M. I was shocked. The asking was 998 k. Its a 3 bedroom bungalow and hadn't been updated in a couple of decades. I'd sell our house but move where? My wife wouldn't allow us to rent... soooo. Comparatively my place at these prices would sell for 1.4 to 1.5 M. There are a few curious things going on in Toronto. One is that the supply of detached homes for sale is low. People aren't selling. Why? A friend of mine who does a bit of conservative investing theorizes that in the GTA there is no more room for new detached homes. He is probably right since there is simply not any space to build. There has to be an upper limit to prices. Another friend just sold a house in Pickering (East side of the GTA) for 800 k. He paid 330 k for it about 4 years ago, and spent 100 k upgrading it - doing the work himself. I dont know what this all means. Even a 30 or 40% correction only takes us back to 3 years ago. This thread was active then. All I know is that when I do net worth calculations I discount the house by about 40% and remove the transaction fees. Safer to know where we stand in tue event of a correction.

I guess I should clarify for the purposes of discussion that the ETFs I have been referring are index funds - say SPY - which creates more units which buy the underlying stocks in the S&P, in proportion to the amount each company makes up in the fund. So, when I read that half a tillion per year has been going into index funds, I am thinking Vanguard, and knockoffs, Not publicly traded mutual funds units. This has inadvertently created active investors out of so called passive investors. And I think the narrowing is happening. The Nifty Fifty of the early 70's is a near perfect example of exactly what index funds are doing today. Valuations on the highest weighted stocks are getting driven higher and higher, as are valuations of lesser companies within the index. It has become a self reinforcing cycle. So, you have a situation where the biggest few hundred companies are getting lofiter and loftier in valuation, with no underlying earnings growth. The money keeps pouring into the index funds, driving the markets to valuations nearly double what they were in 2011, and there has been no earnings growth over that time. Index funds are sowing the seeds of the next bear market, and serving to increase the potential volatility. WHEN a panic hits the formerly "passive" investors will become active and the downside will get exaggerated in speed and depth. And going back to the original discussion. The volatility will happen whether an algo is running the fund or a human is. If anything the lack of human intervention will result in more volatility, not less.

Well, at least one could argue that the alternative (human-driven process) have been proven to not work against passive investing... What is the proof that active investing is not as good as passive investing? I don't think I've ever seen compelling evidence proving either side is better. I'm not sure why there would be evidence proving passive > active investing. With a sufficiently representative sampling, we should expect passive outperformance relative to active would be capped at around the difference in management fees charged. I've seen studies that show both active > passive or passive > active in short time periods or specific long-term periods. Vanguard's own study on active v. passive shows that the answer is almost certainly inconclusive. This is the answer I would expect. I think pushing passive investing helps remove risk for large institutions and it's why you see so many news articles about it. If they can convince everyone to invest passively then economies of scale becomes the only thing that matters and the incumbents will guarantee profit streams indefinitely. Otherwise, the large institutions have to compete against small up-start firms (like they always have) on numerous variables (better temperaments, cultures, analysis and risk management skill, and so on). https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGACT.pdf I think this passive/indexing thing is way overblown and the hype is being driven by the long bull market. We've had very few downturns over the last 8-9 years. Lets see how much people believe passive > active after the S&P 500 takes it on the nose for a prolonged period. Yeah, This strategy is setting up for the mother of all crashes. First, something will happen to precipitate a downturn. Then the cascade of effects will set off a negative feedback loop, and here we go, 1987 all over again, but perhaps way worse, with so many more automated systems, all feeding off data from the other "smart" algorithm. This all rhymes with 1987, long term capital, Nasdaq 5000, and the 2007/08 financial crisis. Blackrock's institutional clients will get hit but they wont bail to the same extent as all the dumb money that has piled into ETFs at a rate of a half tillion a year. Right now, all we need is a catalyst that will reassert the stock cycle. Its anybody's guess as to what that will be, and when it will happen. Buffett and John Bogle will have alot to answer for. Too much of a good thing, well it can be a bad thing. I find this whole notion of passive investing causing a market crash really fascinating. First, if you are arguing that automated (trades made by computers) investing can cause a crash, I suppose that it will and it has happened before. But that is not equivalent to passive investing. Passive investing is not a good or a bad thing, it's a just normal (average) thing. It's basically analogous to saying "I will take the mean of the probability distribution of all performances as my expected outcome". So when more people decide to do passive investing, it will simply make the probability distribution of performances taller and taller around the mean and lowering the variance. I'd argue that in general, the greater the variance in performances indicate the greater the irrationality in the market. So I don't think making the probability distribution more normal itself increase the chance of a market crash. One could argue that passive investing does not allocate the capital in a "free market" manner, because it either distributes the capital according to the market cap (if cap weighted) or just equally (if equal weighted). Especially in the former case, one could foresee a bubble developing because more and more money will be allocated to larger companies if everyone becomes a passive investor. So how would we prevent the above scenario? It seems obvious to me that cap weighted investing is not the most efficient capital allocation method for the society. Perhaps in the future we will see more variety of ETFs that invests in the overall market but with different composition methods that maximize the return on capital for the whole market (and hence the society), i.e., allocating more money to more productive companies. These allocation methods could be devised by experts or learned by computers... I'd bet that the latter is more likely. So imagine that, an ETF that not only tracks the total market return but also maximizes that return by an optimal capital allocation! Now, the argument about dumb money being piled in and that's a bad thing... so one could also conjecture that passive investing has caused more people to invest in stocks, and this has made all the stocks expensive as a whole, which increased the likelihood of a crash. So what then, should a society discourage passive investing to make stocks cheaper? Why not just discourage people from investing all together so that we don't make the entire market overvalued? So I don't think that argument is convincing at all. I dont think I used the word passive investing anywhere. Investing in ETFs is active investing by the investor. They are buying a notion that their money is somehow safe because they are diversified. There is no such thing as passive investing when a market crash is in full swing. I call the people who are pouring hundreds of millions into ETFs, during market highs, the dumb money, because that is what they are. Whatever precipitates a market downturn may suddenly cause a cascade effect of these so called passive investors panicking out of their ETFs which will of course feed on itself. Its happened before and it WILL happen again and the day of reckoning is getting closer and closer. I spoke with "professional" fund managers in very late 1999. They were convinced they had to be invested in Dot.com stocks because that was the wave if the future, No matter what the valautions. How did that work out? Now everyone is convinced they should be using ETFs. And how is this passive investing going to work out. For the late comers, not well. There is nothing to argue, really, because this is how it will unfold. It has over and over. What Buffett and Bogle are telling people in regard to ETFs is not wrong or evil. They are telling people that ETFs are a good way to invest for the long term, toward your retirement or babies education. The problem is not the advice its the people taking that advice. When the going gets tough, the people who invested passively in ETFs will very quickly panic. In various forms it has happened every few years. ETFs are just the next greatest way to lose money, for the dumb money. The huge inflows into ETFs just convince me that we are nearing a market top.

Your very last line "sell as quickly as you can and re-evaluate". Take whatever losses you have before they become too big and have a sober second look. Likely you can always but it back at reasonable price. I just had to do this with Seaspan (twice). If things look cleaner down the road, I will seriously entertain rebuying. Its very situational though. Wells Fargo was not one where I would sell just because they had the scandal. I was looking to buy on weakness but apparently so was everyone else. Buffett and his Dexter Shoe is just another example of Warren trying to be humble. He didn't lose 3.5 B, he lost the purchase cost minus whatever of the residual was left. Acting as if there was opportunity cost is disingenious. The whole debacle was a capital loss and entirely offset by gains that year from elsewhere. And I cant think of anyone else I know of who as made as few mistakes as Buffett. And that is critically important and what distinguishes him from neary everyone else. I dont see him holding Coke, WPO, or others as mistakes.

Well, at least one could argue that the alternative (human-driven process) have been proven to not work against passive investing... What is the proof that active investing is not as good as passive investing? I don't think I've ever seen compelling evidence proving either side is better. I'm not sure why there would be evidence proving passive > active investing. With a sufficiently representative sampling, we should expect passive outperformance relative to active would be capped at around the difference in management fees charged. I've seen studies that show both active > passive or passive > active in short time periods or specific long-term periods. Vanguard's own study on active v. passive shows that the answer is almost certainly inconclusive. This is the answer I would expect. I think pushing passive investing helps remove risk for large institutions and it's why you see so many news articles about it. If they can convince everyone to invest passively then economies of scale becomes the only thing that matters and the incumbents will guarantee profit streams indefinitely. Otherwise, the large institutions have to compete against small up-start firms (like they always have) on numerous variables (better temperaments, cultures, analysis and risk management skill, and so on). https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGACT.pdf I think this passive/indexing thing is way overblown and the hype is being driven by the long bull market. We've had very few downturns over the last 8-9 years. Lets see how much people believe passive > active after the S&P 500 takes it on the nose for a prolonged period. Yeah, This strategy is setting up for the mother of all crashes. First, something will happen to precipitate a downturn. Then the cascade of effects will set off a negative feedback loop, and here we go, 1987 all over again, but perhaps way worse, with so many more automated systems, all feeding off data from the other "smart" algorithm. This all rhymes with 1987, long term capital, Nasdaq 5000, and the 2007/08 financial crisis. Blackrock's institutional clients will get hit but they wont bail to the same extent as all the dumb money that has piled into ETFs at a rate of a half tillion a year. Right now, all we need is a catalyst that will reassert the stock cycle. Its anybody's guess as to what that will be, and when it will happen. Buffett and John Bogle will have alot to answer for. Too much of a good thing, well it can be a bad thing.

Manualofideas is a member on this board. I dont subscribe but have read a few sections. It is very well put together.

In my kids RESP. BMO for 10-11 yrs, possibly 12: Up 310 %, not including the dividend. Similar with RY - I know I bought RY way back then but have added so my acb is higher than BMO. Gotta love Cdn Banks. They keep raising fees and making more money. BCE in my Wife's account. Bought just after the acquisition blowup in 2008. Around $25.00 per share. As above the ACB is not easily computable. Those intial shares have doubled and paid an increasing dividend every year. With SSW the orginal shares were long gone by the time I got out this year but I held continuoulsy since 2008. Made alot in the early days, lost some in the past year. Final tally undetermined. I reimvested those huge divdends elsewhere so it becomes uncomputable.

Definitely not. Money is a funny thing. People often assume the other guy has more than he really has. We have a nice updated house in Toronto, a large mortgage, a small cottage 2.5 hours away, a 6 year old Sante Fe, and an 8 yr. old Accord. I generate about 2/3 of the money we need to live from dividends. Since my Wife still works at a very good job I dont need to spend all of it. We could live on just the investments. As Racemize says at a certain point, it just keeps growing.

Al, Each RESP has 2 accounts behind it for accounting purposes- a capital account and an income account. The capital account basically holds your original contributions and the income account holds your profits. Direct your broker to pay out the income account first. If you are left over with just capital contributions then there's no tax on that because they were taxed originally as income. awesome Rb, I was actually trying to work this out a couple of weeks ago. Tx.

Interesting topic and great input from everyone. For Clarification: The TFSA does not build up contribution room until the individual is 18. Sharper D. Use options in your TFSA at your own risk, but you already know this. My Wife's TFSA account is at break even due to using options (BAC). Mine is up by 40% only, due to the same problem. Had I stuck to conventional GARP value common stocks I would have been way further ahead in both accounts. Options cause permanent loss when you goof up, and IMO are better suited to taxable accounts only. JMO. RESPs are an interesting bird. You can compound in them. We are just at the point of people starting to collapse them. If you have money left over after the education expenses, which we will, you can transfer it into your RRSP or RRIF, tax free. I am starting to save room now in my wife's RRSP for that date. If you cant do that then a certain portion becomes taxable. God only knows how one determines capital gains in this type of situation. The next few years should be instrcutive on how this will all play out. OAS and CPP will be around but no one on this board will ever collect it. I dont even put it in my calculations. I just assume it will be taxed away which is fine. Its meant as a minimum welfare payment for those less fortunate then us.

I think your are unnessarily hard on yourself. Fear is not a bad thing. If things had gone down, then you would have felt pretty smart getting 50% off some decent stocks, and having that cash available. And paying attention to the Macro is not a bad thing either, for a value investor. In fact its sensible. There is no tangible reason why markets have gone up this much in the last few months. Earnings have not risen. GDP has not accelerated anywhere. Inflows into ETFs have skyrocketed. This notion of animal spirits being unleashed in the US is turning out to be the biggest pile of nonsense in years. There isnt going to be very much deregulation, fiscal stimulus, or anything else useful until a massive market crash and nasty recession gets their attention.

I keep thinking about Munger's rule of inverting. Rather than to prove that markets are over valued. What is in the works that could make them go higher? 1) Dropping interest rates (no) 2) Central Bank intervention (there out of ammo). 3) Increase in corporate and or government debt (maybe for a short while) 4) Border tariffs and protectionism (not likely) 5) Sudden innovation or continued innovation in IT sector (May be a short pop but firing people has a way of dampening economic growth) 6) US tax cuts (might help but will raise government debt) 7) China & India (maybe/maybe not) 8) Demographics (not exactly working in the markets favour) 9) Increase in buying by consumers (Looks to be peaking to me - especially big ticket items) 10) Europe - see demographics 11) Dumb money entering market (ETF inflows have been huge). Dumb money entering the market via ETFs seems to be the biggest driver at the moment for overall markets rising in the past couple of years. I think the dumb money is going to panic at some point. ETFs, while a good idea, have now become a juggernaut that can work the opposite way, very quickly.

GAAP Earnings chart: Inflation adjusted to Jan. 2017. I beliieve the Sept. data for 2016 has been annualized. http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-earnings/table Earnings from 2011 are the same as 2016. And markets are up over 80% in same time frame.

This. There are lots of people who have to work to put food on the table. But if you're beyond that stage, take 4 weeks off this summer, sit on a beach, and do nothing. I find that it takes about 2 weeks for my friends with regular jobs to actually relax fully. But most of them will start to go squirrely by week 4 with boredom. It takes me about 2 weeks to reach this stage. Those who are able should find something they like and do, and do it, after getting their "FU" money. Bonus points if it also earns money, makes the world a better place, etc. When I have gone south to all inclusive resorts, I am pretty much ready to come home by day 5. I get bored. I get tired of asking for coffee all day, and being served hand and foot. Its nice not to have to cook and clean up after the kids, but wears thin after a few days. My favourite vacations involve backpacking, or "in motion" trips where we stay for a few days in one place, explore, move on, explore etc. The notion of a caribbean cruise makes me nauseous..and not from seasickness. One thing I would really like to do when/if real estate finally crashes is to buy a fixer upper, and fix 'er up. I practice my guitar at least an hour per day, and play in a non-pro band that practices once per week. I will probably pursue this more as time goes, but dont expect to ever make a cent off of it. Oh, and course there are the kids. I do far more with them, and for them, than my Dad, or his Dad, ever did. My birth family was very typical for the 70s with Dad bringing home the bacon, Mom raising us. My own family is not like that at all. Our one concession to luxury is a great lady who cleans the house throughly every two weeks, saving us from a divorce. Otherwise, we buy used cars, and drive them into the ground. I do nearly all home repairs myself with assistance from you tube. I read alot on a multitude of topics. Very much a generalist. Some of it may have relevance to investing, most not. Having FU money changes things in weird and subtle ways. You hear a radio station contest with a $1000 prize and think why bother. The local hospital has a lottery with a 50,000 dollar prize - big deal for some but doesn't really move the needle anymore... not that I would turn it away. :-). And I buy anything I want when I want to. Given my wants are not much I am unlikely to blow the budget. BTW: Interested to hear others stories: Richard. If I ever go back to a job it will be more like Sanjeev, and Norm's situations. It would have to be a labour of love, not exclusively for the money.

uccmal: Not a multimillionaire. minimillionaire is more like it. I like the challenge. Right now it sucks though. There are limited (No) good values. To me this indicates a market top. Its now a patience game waiting for the next major crash. It was like this in 2007/2008. I had less experience then and was going down the quality curve. Not this time. I'm judiciously raising cash. I am sitting on overvalued real estate. Sooner or later things are going to blow up.

I already try to minimize my cap. gains taxes. I have been deleveraging for months. This might make me more selective, and might make me more disciplined, when I buy, which isn't a bad thing. For my Wife's account I try not to trade at all, and when I do it is to get rid of losers, not winners. She has a good job, she shows no inkling of leaving for a few years yet. I had to leave my job nearly 3 years ago, because I was making 30,000 a year at my job, after capital gains taxes on my investments, in the 3 years prior. My gross salary was 90 k. Okay, the punishment wasn't that bad, but still, the system is so f'ed up I quit a job to save money. FWIW, if the government enacts this tax, I think it is collossally dumb. What a way to kill investment.

I think we are sitting mid way through 2007. Aside from the charts Maida has shown I have seen another that shows S&P GAAP EPS, unadjusted. GAAP earnings have not grown since 2011. Will post the chart when I find it. Adjusted, or phony accounting earnings have grown, but not GAAP. Interest rates are going up. A quarter point on a 20 T, Federal Debt is 50 B per year. A few such increases will make Trumps tax cuts look rather lame. Before you all rush to correct me I realize that it is not that dramatic, due to curve variations, and so forth, but it is a headwind. If the fed. does two more raises this year then borrowing costs will have doubled at the short end in one year. Government and companies fat with debt will at some point have to roll it over at higher rates. Or issue shares to pay it down which tends to dilute earnings. As to Buffett, we all know he thinks long term, into and past the next crash. Berk. is not exactly blowing the budget buying stock. The cash is piling, and allowing Brk. to be the saviour of last resort on an even bigger scale than before. May Warren live to see the day. I am I full delevering mode. I haven't been this worried since 2007. There are simply no GOOD values to be found right now. The dividends flow through the door. I see no compelling reason to go down the quality curve (been there, done that). I have cleared all the garbage out of my portfolio, and am now starting to whittle away the really great stuff. And yes, I am still > 100% invested, about 115% at the moment. Hoping to get to 100 % over the next few months. This is way below where I was at when I went into the 2008 crash. I want resources available when the crash comes. Since world governments have no ammo to prop anything up this time, any downturn will be long and painful.

Except, except... In Ontario when Mcguinty came into power the liberals started the healthcare premium tax, graduated according to income. 800 a person for me and my wife. From my perspective, and probably yours as well, I already pay my fair share and more. Now, dont get me wrong. I dont care about the extra 1600 but if you then want to start charging me for each visit I will certainly cry foul, and vote for someone else. Health care is the sacred cow of government. No government wants to be seen reducing care, so like Buffett's inflation tapeworm, the health care budgets keep on rising. This is the problem the Reps. are facing in the States. X number of people who had poor health care have suddenly got better care due to the ACA. The Reps. cant take that away. Suddenly, all those voters who voted against Obama care will have their care under the Affordable Care Act taken away. And there go the votes when they figure out that O-care is the ACA.

The article is pretty silly. I've rarely seen a business that functioned in any way other than constant upselling, and trying to persuade clients to buy things that they don't need. The last time I bought a car, they tried to sell me a more expensive model, and they pushed the undercoating and extended warranty (don't even get me started on the service department). The last time I went out for supper they tried to convince me to order another pint, and to buy dessert. That's life as a consumer. The CBC does people a disservice by leaving the impression that banks are behaving any differently then they've done in the past -- if you were stupid enough to accept the posted interest rate, you've always gotten hosed (but that's true of Bell and Rogers too). Tempest in a teacup. Good points SJ. I dont drink alcohol, and the look of disappointment on servers faces when I order a pop, or I am fine with the water, is interesting. There goes my 20% tip on that glass of wine.... And dealership service departments and quick lube places are the worst of the worst. I was waiting in a Midas muffler for a couple of hours and watched the salesperson sell several serpentine belts. Now, I dont know about anyone else, but I have driven several cars into the ground and never had to replace a serpentine belt. The manual says you need to check your brake fluid, tranny fluid, etc.... Not change it. And an engine flush? Isn't the whole point of changing your oil because the oil flushes the engine? I hate Bell so much I bought the stock.

Comparing US health care to Cdn. Health care is kind of like comparing SHLD to JCpenny. One is really bad, and the other is not so great. European countries have better and more cost effective systems than Canada. And I have no idea why this is the case. Cost containment problems with Canadian health care related to better systems in EU may be due to: 1) a powerful medical lobby and gate keeping. This serves to limit the number of high level practitioners available keeping costs up. 2) A high preponderance of really big hospitals with really big bureaucracies and dead wood. 3) population density... we have to subsidize low population areas. 4) Citizen behaviour... ER rooms get full of people with colds and flu. 5) Powerful medical lobby that can get funding for number 2) I worked in a hospital some time ago, and the amount of deadwood was astounding. I call it Canada's biggest social and jobs program. The US has a bloated military, we have a bloated health care system. Both give good jobs to those who are otherwise unemployable. Successive governments have tried to rein it in a every level, amd always fail.

To give you a bit of equivalence. TD is like WFC (in more ways than one it seems). It started a transformation with a new CEO in 2003. It's been retail focused and customer friendly. Very good risk management. Expanded a lot in the US mainly east coast. RBC is kinda like JPM. It has a large retail business in Canada but they like to be the big boy and do flashy deals. So for the past decade or so they've focused a lot on investment banking and wealth management. They wanna become a big global investment bank. BNS is pretty conservative in it's Canadian operation. It's also pretty international. In that it has a large Latin American and Caribbean operation. I sold my BNS stock a few years back because in my opinion their risk management in Lat-Am has deteriorated. Also has less investment banking than RBC or TD and they own the former ING direct discount bank in Canada. TD Waterhouse should ring a bell for any investor in NA. RBC is like JPM and they are huge. A little overpriced at the moment. I have been selling my shares down a bit. I did as well on RBC as I might have on BAC without the baggage. As to scale the collective big 5: RBC, CIBC, TD, BNS, and BMO fall somewhere between a half to a third the size of JPM, WFC, or BAC. They are bigger than nearly all regional US banks. They are protected by Cdn. legislation, but are also expected to provide for Canadians. They are huge employers, and have some of the best private sector jobs in Canada, with good pensions, reasonable pay, and good job security. Generally they promote young people within. It is sort of a tacit agreement between our government and the banks. You provide for Canadian's, dont be too obnoxious, and we will protect you with legislation. Part of the reason they have been so well run during the period in question is that they had their day of reckoning in the eighties and nineties. We had back to back bad recessions in the early 80s, and the late 80s into the mid 90s.The banks had to belt tighten big time. Then came the US mortgage crisis which served up a warning to them. I cant speak to their risk management right now. Its likely gotten sloppy like JPM, or WFC were sloppy in 2007. But not like Countrywide or Washington Mutual. In a severe downturn globally they will get hit the same as anyone else. A mortgage crisis in Canada is unlikely. House prices in Toronto are nuts but that doesnt necessarily put the big banks in any serious jeopardy. The riskier mortgages are held by other non- bank entities. Chances are, if/when there is a major downturn in CDn. house prices they will each take some writedowns, dust themselves off, tighten up their lending a bit and carry on. None of this implies that I would buy their stock right now though. But them, I am not buying anything. I figure sometime in the next couple of years I will get any one of them at two thirds, or even one half of todays price.

In Canada, if you are the victim of a tort, you can definitely sue. In general, you should only expect to receive an award equivalent to your demonstrated economic losses, plus your litigation costs. Unlike the United States, punitive damages are very unusual in Canada. So is that a good thing or a bad thing that punitive damages are rare? In the US, there have been some pretty high profile cases of class action suits with damages that are eyeboggling, particularly the $4.9 billion award against General Motors to the families of six people who were killed by exploding fuel tanks. Awards with large punitive damages certainly result in companies being more careful, but it does encourage people to treat relatively minor incidents as "lottery tickets" resulting in a bit more of a litigious society. So is that good, bad, or some of each? SJ God only knows. I am not going to step out too far here. Not being a lawyer and all. In Canada, if you sue someone and lose you can be on the hook for nearly all of their defense costs. This serves as a major impediment to starting a lawsuit. In the US the defendant has to pay their own defense costs thus reducing the risk to the plaintiff. A major structural difference. The defendant in the US can countersue but chances are the original plaintiff doesn't have any money - why else would they be suing.

TD is on my watchlist. If it hits its 52 week low, I will start buying.... subject to there not being better deals elsewhere (i.e. the long awaited general market crash). Its long way from there right now. Whatever their problems, which are probably similar at all the major banks, they have a huge moat. I am in no way naive to the aggressive sales tactics that push the bounds of legality. I have had ugly dealings with RBC and Scotia with regards to my MIL. We instructed each bank to not to try and sell her anything without permission from her Power of Attorney (basically me advising my Wife). They call her up and do it anyway. Watch for every one of these banks to be sanctioned by the regulators, or subject to class action lawsuits. But as we know from WFC it will amount to nothing in the end.