If ur referring to me, then boo hoo, cry me a river.

I never say I'm rich, just that I'm doing way better outside of Vancouver than I was in Vancouver - this is always a relative statement, I could be making $2 a day now whereas I was making $1 a day before, still means I'd be poor arse broke. Same goes for investing vs. renting, I do way better renting. I only say this as an attempt to educate others who aren't financially literate (which is 80% of the world)

And sorry if I'm smart and come across as being smarter than most, I'm on the rough side of 30 have been working and educating myself for the last 14 years I'm the world of finance. So, yeah, this is def. one of my niche areas of expertise.

If people want me to F off, I will, happily - I don't want to give my time where I'm not wanted

I stopped believing in equities and securities when the bubble bursted in the Great Recession. While it is true that the securities market have generally been making healthy gains over the past 25+ years or so (except for the handful of crashes and market crisis), the marketing bursting from derivatives, accumulators, etc. is telling me that the entire financial market is just one big scam. It's musical chairs where everyone is happy until the music stops, and then you realize 6/10 people are getting caught with their pants down, including honest folks that only wanted to safeguard their earnings.

At the same time, the heaps and piles of hot money coming out of Mainland China has already made our market unhealthy and unsustainable. So again, not only is the market difficult to get into, it is also defying common sense and logic. As an investor, it makes no sense to invest into something that doesn't make sense.

Charles in charge, is that you?

Securities of a company making $10 a year per share with a $100 share price does not 'not make sense' it makes perfect sense, 10x earnings valuation.

Your post screams of someone who has been fear mongered and who doesn't understand how equities, bonds, etc. work

The game isn't rigged, and for the crash, who cares, just makes a buying opportunity. Also, who cares unless you have to sell, which none of should need to as we're not at retirement age (in which case you would have moved out of equities within 5 yrs of retiring to sure up your capital.

If you had, say $1,000 a month in free cash from income, net of all expenses, what would you do with it then? Hopefully you are all investing some amount every month (best way to invest).

Also - "don't spend on stuff you want/need then invest what's left, invest what you need to and spend what's left" - forgot who said this, but this is fucking immense advice (I.e. Live way within your means and be secure in retirement)

all the noobs who sold below S&P500 1000 will all come back when it crosses 2000 like typical sheeple who don't think for themselves. somehow they missed the investment motto - buy low sell high. instead they got it backward which kind is like the people who've bought van RE in the last 3 years.

Just want to hear other people's opinion on recent re congestion and traffic issues due to all the construction / density and such.

I just feel as though we don't have enough services to match all the new High-rise towers and new large mansions / duplexes being built.

The result is traffic congestion is a bitch, and there's no street parking on side streets. Seems like it's much more difficult to park in front of your house now.

I'm not sure if I blame:

- translink for being soo damn inefficient
- city planners for not planning the city better.
- city counsel members and permit approvers for approving zoning or buildings that dont provide off-street parking. If you are going to have bsmt suites and such, at least have drive-ways or garages so theres not soo many cars on the streets.

I know this is a bigger problem in surrey but it's starting to be a bigger issue in Vancouver/Burnaby

Not exactly RE related but you finance guys, what do you think about this recent record run up of the markets? Is it the real deal?

That is a selfish and irresponsible reply to those who lost their shirts in the last recession. It is true that a lot of us are not at the retirement age, but how much of the population is? A quick check at Stats Canada says that 43.6% of the population is 45 or older, and 36% of them are 50 and above. If they put their retirement funds into the subprime investment vehicles and derivatives because the rating agencies gave these products a triple A rating, are you just gonna tell them "too bad, so sad"? If the game is not rigged, the SEC wouldn't have penalized the big rating agencies with record fines.

IMO, traffic and congestion is gonna be the city's biggest challenge in the foreseeable future. Simply put, Metro Vancouver's traffic infrastructure wasn't designed to support high density in the first place, and Translink's incompetence doesn't help. It's a chicken and egg problem that I don't know how it can be easily tackled. We need to get people out of cars and into mass transit, but it is hard to do that when there is no mass transit in place, and public transit sucks. The 3 levels of government also isn't willing to / capable of directing funds to properly get things started (look how long it took the Evergreen Line to get going), so how do you get around that?

What happens when the stock markets makes a new high? you'd people would be screaming how much money they've made and celebrate right? nop all i hear is people bitching and moaning how the FED has rigged the game and this whole run up is a liquidity driven rally. BULLSHIT!

I could careless if it is rigged or not as long as I make money that all it matters. I don't give a shit about anything else. People lost all their dough in the crash? Too bad. No one will cry for me if I lose 50% in one year because of my own stupidity so why would I for someone else.

If you haven't notice they are building a lot of these apartments cities near Skytrain stations to try and get people on the Skytrain. Some apartments don't even offer the option to purchase or get a parking stall unless you are above certain floors or at least purchase a 1 one bedroom unit. I have the option to purchase an extra parking stall for my unit (so I have 2 parking stalls). I don't drive but with the location where my unit are I am sure I can rent it out for at least $200 a month each easily. Yeah is a dick move but hey I got the option so why not right.

The issue is that Skytrain works great if you live near it and your work is also near a Skytrain station (It takes me about 30mins to get to work on Skytrain Vs driving which takes 45mins at least). But the issue is that outside of that Skytrain and buses is pretty much uesless. Last Skytrain leaves around 1am on Sat and on Sun around 12am and buses is like 30mins each bus after rush hour. Is not great when you miss a bus.

Also the Skytrain is pretty much running at max capacity during rush hour, I can't image how bad it gets when the ever green line is built and what all these apartments ready and people moving in. The system won't be able to take it. Transit either needs to increase the frequency of Skytrains and buses during rush and non rush hour. There is the talk of building a light rail from Boardway to UBC but I am against it right now. First we need to make sure the current system is capable of handling the growth it will see int he next 10years then you can talk about expansion.

I can't even respond to such a stupid response. It's almost like u have no idea how the world works.

U don't lose it until u sell it.

When shit goes down, u just use ur monthly investment to buy relatively more.

Ur completely right, ppl who don't understand just say it's rigged. Sometimes things go wrong, but I never bought hybrid mortgage backed freak securities a s they were too risky and stupid. Why would I buy them when I can buy ge, Siemens, IBM, etc and get 3-5% yield plus capital appreciation

I think it's smart to have these condo towers near transit hubs/sky train stations, but the other issue is also the urban sprawl problem with many homes with basement suites and duplexes coming up, but the city is not accounting for all those units in their infrastructure.

street parking is becoming a huge problem. either we need people to ride bikes more, or take more transit.

I hope more off-street parking is available in terms of multiple car garages and larger drive-ways, but then there's the issue of floods and rain run off due to soo much pavement.

Number 1 reason people don't want to take transit is because is not convenient especially when you have to take the bus. Miss a bus on a weekend well good luck waiting for another one which takes up to 30mins or more. Skytrain is better if you live near a skytrain station. Also are you going to ride the skytrain or bus carrying a week worth of food? (at least most people I know goes grocery shopping once a week). Is not convenient.

Is hard to find street parking sometimes. I know some apartments only have small amounts of visitor parking is insane, good luck trying to find a parking spot when visiting friends. We don't need more bike lanes what we need is more convenient mass transit, more frequency of buses and skytrains and less outages.

I'm not one of those people who thinks the whole thing is rigged, but I also stopped investing in the stock market. I just realized that the people who control the markets, i.e those who hold the most shares, have the power to move the market, or a particular company's share, in any direction they want. All is well if you're on the same page as the person who decides to move the share price, but I would sure hate to be on the losing end because a couple of billionaires decided they want to "shake things up"

In the short term, I agree, but if you invest for the short term, you are fraught with risk - something like the Japanese tsunami could happen and kill your short term positions.

But the market is rational over the long term, say you buy a solid business, a billionaire activist investor comes in, shakes things up, price goes up or down immediately, if the story hasn't changed, over a couple months or maybe years at worse, rational consumers will return and the valuations metrics will move back to where they should be.

Markets are efficient in the long term - some stocks are a ponzi, I believe we're in a moderate tech bubble - that's a type of ponzi (money chasing money with no income to support it) - that's why I'm not directly exposed to any tech companies, I like ur blue chips, slow and boring grinders, with a splash of small cap, a splash of fixed income, all mixed together in a nice boring diversified portfolio managed by people who can spend a lot more time and effort than I could ever afford to ensure my portfolio is in a good, long term, balanced mixed of securities.

I always used to think "I'm so smart, I can pick the best stocks, I know the best time to enter and exit the market" - not the case, I can't afford the time, and to be honest, I think it is so incredibly risky to try to time the market, but I'm glad I tried, I'm glad i realized I would have been better off just buying an s&p500 etf, I didn't lose much, but took way too much risk by not being diversified. And thankfully it happened at a young age so now I can get serious about investing properly.

It's a similar case with real estate, timing your entrance is everything. But the sad thing is, real estate isn't regulated like the securities markets are, so ppl are investing more in their homes than they ever would in securities, and it's completely unregulated - how does that work or make sense? I think that's a crime!

Whilst the securities regulation clearly has made mistakes, who said you had to sell and 'be wiped out' in 08/09? If you are near retirement - 5yr rule is the basic bare minimum rule that 5 years before retirement - you should be out of equities, but any half decent investment advisor would have shifted you slowly away from equities before this time to conserve capital and start paying income - so 08/09 wouldn't have been an issue - If ur too dumb to pay 1% a year on assets to have ur money managed, then u deserve what u get. So this whole argument, as present previously by ppl who are clearly not financially literate and just spout out/listen to anti-equity propaganda, is moot. The only ppl wiped out by 08/09 were either invested in a Ponzi scheme (which is illegal, not much can be done there, if ppl steal, that fucking blows), those that sold on fear (aka idiots, buy high, sell low, as was well pointed out earlier), and people who mismanaged their investments based on retirement age - see my point a couple lines up.

We can put the "equities are the devil" BS to bed now, it's been done before, it'll be done again tomorrow, all whilst those simply invested in a diversified portfolio make, on average 8-10% p.a. Relax and don't worry about their money/equity/wealth - a much more enjoyable way to live than stressing about barely being able to afford one's mortgage.

To your good topic of discussion about equities outperforming RE in the long term - it depends on which equities. It is hard to even generalize it as "most equities" or "some equities" because it truly is just a handful and a mixture of right timing - a.k.a. GOOG back in the day as opposed to buying it now.

In my humble opinion, RE has a much larger potential for return due to the fact that there is always a buyer for RE - someone needs a place to live or is looking to move. Equities on the other hand won't have such a hold on a buyer's reason to purchase.

Overall, both work hand in hand. If you have solid equities while investing in RE, you win more than one who holds one or the other.

Nice topic 4444 - way better than the other random junk that get's posted in RS now these days.

I work near chinatown. On an average work day, I am looking at a <25 minute drive into work at 6:30 am and between 30-45 minutes drive home during the 4 -6 pm rush hour.

By bus, I am looking at a 1 hour journey which includes a 10 minute walk and that is if I didn't miss the very first bus. The bus/skytrain trip sucks very badly in the winter when it is cold and wet. Plus, driving to work, I have the option to drive somewhere for lunch.

S&p 500 is 'equities' to me, as it will provide exposure to the world economy, but focused on the US too.

Thing is, if you look at returns since the late 1800's they've been around 9% p.a.

Real estate has gone up and up and up not because of demand outstripping supply on its own, but because money has gotten way cheaper and way more available. But at that real estate still only increases with inflation. So now that we're in a position where money can't really get any cheaper, the future looks bleek for real estate in high price jurisdictions like Canada.

Also, if you want exposure to real estate, I'd rather own a REIT, you'll get the benefits of owning, indirectly, in high quality real estate (commercial, residential, etc) which is professionally managed, you'll never get a clogged toilet call at 2 am, and you will be 100% liquid. You can't say that physical real estate is liquid.

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar...histretSP.html

On the note of having a diversified portfolio, I'd just like to mention how much of a godsend it is for the proliferation of ETFs and the variety available now.

There are even "complete portfolio" funds where you can buy one fund to build an entire diversified portfolio without having to worry about selecting specific markets or industries, the portfolio balance/exposure of each, etc.

And with free ETF buys from Questrade you can afford to 'play' around with a few hundred dollars just to see how it all works.

Interesting, never heard of these complete portfolio etfs, what are their ticker symbols? I'd love to look at them

I've come across these ones from ishares: XGR XGR XGR XAL XGR. I haven't looked into each of the holdings but ishares touts them as 'packaged solutions'

"an easy and inexpensive way to invest is to consider one of our complete portfolios, or ‘fund of funds’. You can use them to build an entire portfolio in just one trade, or to round out or complete an existing portfolio."
Posted via RS Mobile

The concept reminds me of the Fund of Funds pushed out by the big banks here for their mutual funds. I'm not a fan of the concept yet I hope it shows more promise for ETFs than it does for mutual funds.

I haven't looked into them yet and I'm assuming you've taken a look into them Sonick. What do you think about them?

What's wrong with Mutual Funds?

And for dinner too! You get off at 4:30pm/5pm made dinner plans with friends at 7pm. Are you going to transit home and then go out which takes 1hour at least? Mind as well either drive or stay out.

Canadian mutual funds have the highest MER in developed countries and deferred sales charge (back-end fees). You are better off in an ETF or low cost index fund.