Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - America’s Fix Won’t Be Easy America has been in a stupor the last twenty years. They have allowed themselves to get to a point strategically, where they have to import 90% of their uranium and almost the same percentage of rare earth minerals. They run massive trade and budget deficits which require foreigners to use their surplus dollars to buy huge amounts of government debt to make it work. Their pension system will run out of funds in less than seven years. To fix this mess will take time and require pain and financial sacrifice from everyone. A reality, that the American voter, is in complete denial.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Uranium The uranium sector looks like it is finally waking up from decades of slumber. The world has come to grips with the fact that nuclear is the only untapped technology capable of generating abundant energy 24/7, without producing Co2. The streamlining of the nuclear approval process, the development of small modular reactors and an increase in electricity demand point to a uranium supply deficit. We need to produce about 20% more to meet demand. It will take at least a decade to bring on enough mine capacity to satisfy the deficit. How far prices can rise in the meantime - is anyone’s guess.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Market Cycles I have never seen anyone believe that tides levels will keep going in one direction forever because it is different this time. People have watched tides, cycle in and out twice a day for generations. That is what tides do. Markets do the same thing, just not with as much regularity. In spite of this frequency, investors are always shocked when overpriced markets go down and undervalued ones go up. The biggest mistake investors make is thinking in one direction. Markets are cyclical and move in waves - not straight lines.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Playing With Fire History shows that in times of conflict, countries often withhold interest payments on domestic bonds held by their enemies. United States, froze payments on dollar-denominated debt to the Japanese before World War II, and did the same to Russia after the Ukraine war began. The downside in doing this, is fewer people wanting to own your debt or currency. When you are a massive borrower like the US, fear of retaliation and confiscation aren’t big selling features. America is playing with fire, biting the hand of people who support them

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Concentration & Returns Diversification in a portfolio is important because it spreads your risk across many assets and lowers exposure to any one of them. The problem, is you seldom get market beating returns owning dozens or even hundreds of securities. Oversized gains require concentrated portfolios. For example, Bill Gates has a 50 billion dollar investment portfolio. 79% of it is in only 4 stocks - Microsoft, Waste Management, Berkshire Hathaway and Canadian National Railway. The stocks high quality lessens the risk, but the concentration danger that goes hand in hand with oversized returns is still there.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Time in Retirement Grows Since the year 2000, the costs of basic needs—such as home ownership, healthcare, and education—have consistently outpaced wage growth. This trend is expected to continue. As life expectancy increases, the amount of time we spend in retirement grows as well. By 2043, the average retirement may be 21 years. As a result, Canadians need to re-examine their financial goals. Success could mean saving more, working longer, seeking higher returns on investment or a combination of the above. The more time you have to make these adjustments the less likely you will be to outlive your retirement savings.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - The Cockroach Rule If you have ever had cockroach’s in your kitchen, you will know there is never just one. The same advice holds true with loan portfolios of financial institutions like banks and trust companies. When a particular institution starts writing off aggressive, high risk loans, it is often a signal that there are more to come. Mistakes are seldom solo. If a lender likes a sector, they will green light staff to approve more loans in the same line of business. When a bank has to write off a bad idea, investors need to beware. Just like cockroaches, there are usually more than one.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Up 2/3’s The Time There are two things new investors need to understand about stock markets. The first is markets go down much faster than they go up. Stocks seem to take the elevator down and the escalator up. This can be scary until you understand the second major trait of stock markets. And that is that they go up far more than they go down. In fact they go up 2/3rds of the time and down a 1/3rd. This mean s they are rising twice as often as they are falling. Investors who focus on the first trait and get scared off are the ones who don’t make any money. Those who recognize the long term trend is up are the big winners.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Seeking Excellence One of the best ways to protect yourself in volatile markets is to focus on owning the best of the best, the standouts, the cream of the crop. These are the companies with better execution, better products, better service and superior profits. David Gardiner co-founder on Motley Fool and one of the best growth investors of our era, defines the job of an investor as finding excellence, buying excellence, and adding to excellence over time. Sticking with this strategy also means ruthlessly pruning mediocrity. The point is to water the flowers and pull the weeds.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - AI’s Circular Money People are wondering where the profits will come from to justify the trillions being spent on AI infrastructure. Of the 100’s of millions of people who use AI, only 3% are paying customers. Right now lots of money is pouring in. ChatGPT is buying billions of dollars worth of servers from Oracle, who are buying billions of dollars worth of computer chips from Nvidia. How is ChatGPT paying for all this. From a 100 billion dollar investment from Nvidia of course. There are plenty of these circular deals moving money around the industry, but virtually no discussion of how any of this will generate enough profit to pay for it.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Perks Working For Government If you are looking for a career path, two options are working for government or private industry. On average, government pays 4.8% more in wages or salaries than the private sector. Also, if you work for government, you are 2.3 times more likely to have a pension - guaranteeing income at retirement. Government jobs are 50% more flexible in allowing days off for personal reasons, have more job security and on average allow workers to retire 2.2 years sooner than employees in the private sector. Working for municipal, provincial or Federal governments has its perks.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Lobbying Works Since 2008, US Corporations have spent about 3.3 billion dollars a year employing 13,000 lobbyists to sway the US government into enacting favourable legislation for the companies and industries they represent. The reason there are so many lobbyists, is because what they do works. Studies show that companies generally get more financial bang for their buck lobbying than spending the same dollars on research and development. Saying that America has the best government money can buy, is no joke.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Speculation In TFSA’s The advantage of a TFSA is that investment gains within it are tax free. This makes it tempting for investors to put their speculative investments inside this shelter. If they hit a home run on one of them, the investor won’t have to share gains with the Canada Revenue Agency. The problem with this argument, is most speculative investments lose money. By putting them in a Tax Free Savings Account, you are unable to write losses off against capital gains, like you could in a regular investment account. Thus losing a major tax deduction. For more information, listen to our Making Money podcast hosted by Ron Hiebert and Gord Whitehead at letsmakemoney.ca or CFCW.com.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - The Halo Effect They call it the Halo Effect. When people are really good at one thing, it can trick them into believing they are qualified, to weigh in on other areas as well. This happens frequently in the investment arena. People might be accomplished actors, sports stars, scientists or politicians, but few have the skills to understand, much less predict, future economic events and the markets reaction to them. What’s worse, is the public also gets mesmerized by the Halo Effect. We are willing to give people financial credibility because they are good at something else - big mistake.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Europe’s Energy Demand A big beneficiary of Russia’ war with Ukraine has been America’s fossil fuel industry. Once the fighting started, Europe stopped using Russian oil and gas in the hope that it would pressure Putin into making peace. American crude and Liquified Natural Gas soon displaced Russian supplies. When the war ends, Europe will likely switch back to more Russian fuels, because they are considerably cheaper and European refineries have been built specifically to process the stuff. If the switch happens, American energy companies could be big losers, as a major market for their products disappears.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Better Information Investors need to review their sources of investment information. Ask yourself: When was the last time you got good investment advice from a front page headline in a newspaper or magazine? When was the last time mainstream media made a timely call about a recession? When did an interview with the general public provide insights that allowed you to profit or avoid loss? Have you, or anyone you know, actually gotten wealthy following opinions on social media? For me, the answers are, never, never, no, and no. The key to profitable investing, starts with better information.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Deductible Moving Expenses If you are moving to another location, those expenses could be tax deductible. Under the Income Tax Act, you can deduct moving expenses for changing work locations, running a business, or becoming a full-time student. The expenses can be deducted from employment or self-employment income earned at your new work location. To qualify, your new home must be at least 40 kilometres closer to your new workplace or school. Deductible expenses include the cost of the movers, real estate commissions and land transfer taxes. If you meet the CRA’s strict rules, it can save a bundle.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - There Is Always Something To Worry About People run around with their hair on fire more frequently these days. There always seems to be some financial cliff the world is teetering on the edge of. Tariffs, trade wars, Brexit, interest rates, debt, inflation, Hamas, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Putin, Trump, Xi and the list goes on. The hair on fire crowd, never admits the world has carried on in spite of their doom and gloom. Next time you are exposed to a fountain of negativity, go into a quiet room, put on a set of noise cancelling headphones and enjoy some nice music with a glass of your favorite vintage. Stay there - until the urge to do something stupid goes away.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - USMCA Comes Up Next Summer Canadians don’t like the uncertainty produced by the ongoing trade tensions between Canada and the United States. But a quick end is unlikely. The US/ Mexico/Canada trade agreement is coming up for its five year review in July of 2026. Any trade deals struck now are going to have to be reviewed again in 8 months. Most of the effort going forward, will be focussed on negotiating a comprehensive agreement between the three countries next summer. If you are an investor or business owner, prepare for 8 months of instability.

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Selling With No Regrets If you own a stock that has become a huge financial windfall, the question that needs answering, is whether you should sell all of it, some of it, or hang on for even bigger gains. An investor in this position should ask themselves two things. How would I feel if I sold nothing and it dropped to zero? …And….How would I feel if I sold everything here, and the stock went up another 10 times in value? The best answer, is to sell enough, so you have minimum regrets, no matter where the price goes in the future. It is impossible to eliminate regret, but it is possible to minimize it.