Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Lies, Damn Lies and Stock Price Trends

To paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli. One of my favorite times of the year is here, with the opening of the N.F.L. season and with baseball coming down to the end of the season, the orgy of numbers coming from both games is astounding and quite satisfying for a number nut like me.

As a kid I reveled in the numbers from Baseball and loved collecting them and comparing them, but even as a kid I learned that all the numbers in the world are only telling you what happened in the past (which can be very important), but these numbers do not necessarily point to what will happen in the future. It is important to know what has happened in the past (because we do not wish to re-do our previous mistakes) but to know the future is what we all crave.

Football is awash in numbers to the point where there is an entire industry that has been created to use the statistics created by football games (Fantasy Football leagues), which astounds me, that you create a game from a game (is that recursion?).

Financial analysts do the same things to investors. They have mega-tonnes of data on every single stock and what it has done since it’s inception, and there are entire companies making fortunes analyzing these numbers, predicting what stocks “might” do by doing this analysis.

My understanding of the stock market, is that it has no conscience and no memory. Each day is a new day, and it’s like a Simpson’s episode (i.e. most of what happened yesterday isn’t relevant and it is forgotten) on the Equities market.  The simple fact a stock went down the previous day does not mean it will drop the next day (that fact alone, there may be other much better reasons, but the previous drop means nothing).

I have to laugh when I hear about “downward trends” and “upward trends” being reasons alone to buy or sell stocks, you may as well base your purchases on your lucky rabbit’s foot if you are going to think that way.

Keep crunching those numbers, but remember the numbers alone are meaningless without the context of why the numbers happened.

One of the options I have as part of my severance is what to do about my pension.

My employers pension was a Defined Benefit (up until January 1 this year), it is now a different plan (and my old pension has been capped).

The options I have are:

1. Leave my money in my former (or soon to be) employer’s pension scheme and start drawing from it at either age 55 or later.
2. Take the money out and put it into a Locked In Retirement Account, or at least the portion that the government allows.

As background my current employers pension plan is under funded, by a fairly large amount. I also have passed a point, so that I can draw from the pension when I am 55.

The question now is, do I leave the money in, or take it and run. My wife and I have decided to take the money and run, just for safety sake, given rumors I am hearing, and the fact that the fund is under funded significantly.

I am curious to hear if there is anyone out there that has gone through this and what they did in this situation. Either comment, or if you want send me an e-mail at bigcajunman AT gmail.com, if you don’t want to publicly make any statements.

Michael James posted yesterday an interesting article about inheritances and how money can disappear or dissipate at least from generation to generation. I commented on it and then spoke to Michael James about it (while watching a Little League baseball game).

I see problems with what a lot of people view what money is to them and without a good understanding of what money’s value is, and what it actually means to you it is very easy to spend it without thinking about it.

The Value of Money

My eldest daughter and I have been having talks (OK monologues mostly from me) about her spending habits now that she has a part time job. I have tried to get her to understand that just because you earn money, does not mean you have to increase your spending to compensate for this (yes, I know sometimes parents should listen to their own advice too). She doesn’t seem to understand this point, or forgets it a lot, but I think I made a good point with her a couple of days back.

I still have access to her bank account, so I can see where she is spending her money (she doesn’t usually carry cash, she uses her debit card, and that is another problem, but also for another post). I saw that she had spent $6.95 at Pizza Pizza (presumably for lunch), I remembered she had worked a very long shift at her job the previous night and when I drove her home, she complained about how her feet and back hurt, so I tried to use this to explain the value of money to her.

I pointed out that, the lunch she bought and snarfed down without thinking about it, was almost an hour on her feet, scanning food in the express line at Loblaws (where her job is). Did she really think her lunch was worth the hour of standing, scanning products and listening to customers either complain or ask questions about what she was doing? I hope this helps her understand the value of money, I am not sure, but if it causes her to think, before she spends, that is all I can hope for.

I remember when I was younger, and I had a paper route, I got paid 4 cents a paper, for a paper route of 35 papers, for 6 days a week (I got paid more for Saturday paper), but at the end of it, I made about $8.40 a week and then maybe some tips from my customers. I could have easily gone to a movie every week, but luckily I was socially inept, and really cheap, because I knew how hard I worked to make that money, so I didn’t want to just blow it on the first thing I saw.

Wonder when I lost that?

How do you value money? Do you see the work that went into buying that iPOD? All comments appreciated.