Jerome Bitun

Saw this video from CBC Marketplace with the following description. "Mortgage insurance is meant to offer peace of mind. Most people pay the premiums and think they're covered. But some have discovered - when it's too late - that they aren't." Be sure you understand what you're signing. Talk to a licensed insurance professional before you buy any insurance.

Whew! What a week we've been having! We got a really wild market yesterday. Oil was at $75 from $80 earlier in the week. The Canadian dollar dropped 4 cents to 0.95 and it was just over par a week ago. Gold is now almost $1,200 from trading sideways near $1,100 for last month or so and yesterday the Dow Jones went as down as much as 1,075 points and recovered by closing down 341.90 points. A lot of people as asking what happened? Why did the Dow drop so much yesterday? Was it the potential bankruptcy and street riots in Greece? No, it's been happening for almost a month now. The market has already factored that in. Was it bad earnings or jobs report? No, it wasn't any worse or better than the previous reports. In fact, some of the reports were better. So what happened? Well, a CNBC news report that came out late afternoon yesterday said that Dow Jones went down as much as 1,000 yesterday because it was, get this, due to a typo. A typo! Can you believe that? They said a ...

Happy Halloween! Here's a scary story. The 2005 Statistics Canada report says that a man today will live to age 78 and women will live to age 83. Married men tend to live longer than unmarried men. Thanks ladies! So men, be good to your wife. Not only that, we are also living longer and may actually live past 100 years old in the next 30 years. Anyway, imagine yourself being age 65 today. Your $500,000 RRSP last year is now down to $250,000 because of the market drop. During that drop in the market, you panicked and moved all your RRSP into a GIC. So you just realized all the losses and since the market recovered somewhat since March, you did not participate in the recovery. Assuming you live on $25,000 a year, would your $250,000 last? That means there will be 3 years for men and 8 years for women with no other source of income other than the $830 a month of CPP if you qualify for the whole amount and maybe some OAS. What if your income needs is $30,000 a year? Can you imagi...

I thought I'd share this article by Warren Buffett he wrote in the New York Times on Oct 16, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

*Warning, this is a long newsletter, but will be quite informative if you have the patience to read it.* I'm sure that by now, you've heard what has been happening to the market. Both the Dow Jones and S&P/TSX index dropped more than 500 points Monday due to Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy. In short, it was a slaughter. But is it really? Let me give you a background of what happened before I go into the details on how your investments may be affected. Let's start with Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers is one of the largest investment banks in the US if not the world. I was established in 1850, it is an innovator in global finance and serves the financial needs of corporations, governments, municipalities, institutional clients and high net worth individuals worldwide. It does financing, asset management, investment management, fixed income sales, trading and research. So what went wrong? Well, the best way I can explain it is this, it innovated itself in to a hole....

Saw this site today showing the top 10 foreign holders of U.S. Tresuries. In short, the top 10 nations to which the U.S. owes money. Here's the link to the NY Times with the graphics .

It's RRSP season again and if you haven't started an RRSP or have not fully utilized your RRSP, you better start now. As you may or may not know, the only way you can have a significant amount of retirement money is time. The longer your money is invested, the more time the magic of compounding will work for you. If your employer matches your contribution, use the maximum you can get. Nowhere else are you going to get a free return on your investment guaranteed. If you don't have enough money, look into getting an RRSP loan. Use it to fund your RRSP and when you get a refund, use the refund to pay off the loan. It's one of the cheapest way to fund your RRSP. Most companies are offering Prime rates (6%) for RRSP loans; some even offer Prime - 1%. Check with your adviser to see where you can get the best rate.