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Q: Hi Peter. I'm curious if you recall your days at Sprott and before, specifically late 1999 and then 2007-2008. Did you get a feeling that the markets were overvalued (or had gone up too much too fast)? Did you make any defensive moves by taking profits, going to more conservative holdings, using options to protect downside, etc.? To me it looks like the conditions are ripe for similar declines.

After getting married in 1979, Marie Louise Calvert started showing signs of cognitive decline in 1993. She was diagnosed and found to be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She was represented by a litigation guardian (her daughter from a previous marriage) and sought a divorce, equalization of net family property, and support from Ashton Calvert, who was a widower when they met.

As warmer weather starts to make its way to Canada and the familiar urge to start spring cleaning begins, consider starting your annual clean-up with your online financial life. Today, most of your financial life is online: bank accounts, credit cards, tax software, crypto wallets, brokerages and more. Think about your digital financial footprint like a garden – left untended, it grows ‘weeds’ in the form of dormant subscriptions, security vulnerabilities and outdated information. A few hours of ‘digital weeding’ conducted with the same rigor as you would organize your filing cabinet can help protect you in the future.

Why are software stocks down so much? Is this a buying opportunity, or are they heading even lower?

Q: I believe U.S markets entered a corrective phase last April. Do you think we are entering one now? How often do they normally occur during a year?

The headlines on the front pages of major papers seldom spill over to the headlines of the business section. Instead, the two realms tend to operate as silos. Politics and economics—and more specifically, the vagaries of capital markets—are largely seen as being nearly unrelated. In reality, the spillovers are considerable in normal times, and immense in the current environment.

The essence of the Client Focused Reforms (CFRs) is to require investment firms and advisors to put their clients' interests first, ahead of their own or their Firm's interests. The expected benefits of the Canadian Securities Administrators' (CSA) Client Focused Reforms for clients center on better investor protection and a more trustworthy, client-centric standard for investment advice. The CFR regulation was passed into law in late 2021. Nearly 4 years later, industry adoption is low.

Canadians who go online to seek a romantic partner may fall in love and end up spending the rest of their lives with a perfect match. In many cases, however, romance seekers end up just as lonely as they were before, only thousands of dollars poorer.
Every year, roughly one thousand Canadians report to authorities that they’ve fallen for romance scams, with total losses of about $50 million, says the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC).

We’ve used the same wealth management company for decades, but the advisors have changed over the years due to retirement and illness. The fellow who had advised us for the longest gradually convinced us to put more and more funds into Russell Multi-Asset Income Strategy SR B (303). The Management Expense Ratio (MER) on this fund is 2.16% and the funds now represent 65% of our total assets! He was a persuasive guy, but now we feel foolish to have listened to him.