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Public recently announced AI Agents that could monitor your portfolio and execute trades based on your instructions. You can use plain English to tell agents what to do, like buy options if the VIX goes above a certain level. If you have excess cash in your portfolio, you can have an agent sweep it into a money market or something similar. I think these are all cool features… but I also think it’s unnecessary. Perhaps dangerous. As a buy and hold investor, I’m not monitoring the markets and making informed trades based on what I see. I’m also not sophisticated enough to know what to monitor and what to do when I see something worth acting on. “But Jim, can’t you just learn?” Yes, I can. But as a father of four, there are other things I’d rather be doing instead. I’d rather spend time with my kids, my lovely wife, exercise, or pursue my hobbies. I think AI Agents can be powerful but I’m not comfortable with them buying anything for me, whether it’s yogurt or shares of VOO. I’m not sure how anyone would be comfortable given what happens with flash crashes (but they obviously still do it with high frequency trading). This brings up a bigger question, and one you will have to answer for yourself, do you really need AI in your finances at all? My experiences below are with ChatGPT on the ChatGPT Plus plan, which costs $20 per month. I’m not sure how it compares with the free in terms of the quality of its responses, but I suspect it’s not terribly different than the free tier for these purposes. Do You Need AI? No. Personal finance is quite simple and the advice for most Americans is the same: Save more of your money, Invest it wisely, and, Have the patience to wait. It’s why most personal finance advice fits on an index card. It’s not that we don’t know what to do, it’s that life and our lizard brains get in the way. Derek Sivers famously said “If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” We know what we should be doing but we aren’t doing it. It’s not lack of knowledge, it’s lack of resources or discipline. We aren’t saving enough because we aren’t making enough or we’re spending too much. We don’t need AI to tell us that, we know it already. But are there areas where a model could make our lives a little bit easier? Is It Useful? Yes, But… Do we need to give AI models an excessive amount of personal data? This comes down to personal comfort. Some people are comfortable putting their home address and phone number into plaintext emails. Some people are not. Where you fall on that spectrum can determine whether you need AI. While wouldn’t use an AI Agent to trade stocks, there are ways to use AI models to help identify blind
Most doctors have it in them to make excellent expert witnesses, but still hesitate due to misconceptions about the work. … Read more
Looking for new bank promotions in Canada? Here are some of the Canadian bank account promos available and their caveats! Some of these new account bank promotions come on more regularly than others. For example, the iPad promotion from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) … Read moreCanadian New Bank Account Promotions September 2026 (FREE iPad or $400 Cash) The post Canadian New Bank Account Promotions September 2026 (FREE iPad or $400 Cash) appeared first […]
I’m still disappointed in the Telus dividend cut, but I have decided what I am going to do. Even though I usually cut a dividend paying equitiy out of my portfolio when a dividend cut comes, I realize I am somewhat emotionally attached to Telus … Read moreAugust 2026 Dividend Income Update The post August 2026 Dividend Income Update appeared first on Genymoney.ca.
I recently joined a professional organization to discuss various topics in wealth management. On our first Zoom call there was a debate around the use of levered long/short strategies. For the uninitiated, a levered long/short strategy is a way of taking market risk (like buying an index fund) while generating tax losses to offset capital gains (now or in the future). The leverage is what’s important here. By borrowing against your holdings, you can short some securities while keeping the same overall market exposure as an index fund. So if the market goes up, you’d close your short positions (which lost money) to generate tax losses and hold your long positions (which made money). And if the market goes down, you do the opposite. Depending on how the market performs and how much leverage you use, you can generate cumulative net capital losses ranging from roughly 30% to 200% of the original capital invested over a decade. So if you invested $1M, these strategies could create anywhere from $300,000 to $2M in losses. These losses can then be used to reduce your current (or future) tax bill. The long/short strategy has grown in popularity in recent years and some custodians are worried about the risks. As a result, Schwab recently raised the minimum to $10M on some of these accounts (up from $1M), while Fidelity has indefinitely paused onboarding new clients into the strategy. While the financial benefits of a long/short strategy are clear, the psychological costs are often overlooked. Because while this strategy generates large tax losses, it also generates large unrealized gains. And these gains can keep you trapped in your positions for life. Let’s look at a simplified example to see why. Imagine two stocks (A and B) with identical returns and prices, but from different companies. You own one share of stock A that is currently $100/share. Assume stock A falls to $80 a share and you sell it to generate a $20 capital loss. You then use the proceeds from that sale ($80) to buy one share of stock B (which is now also $80 a share). If stock B ends up recovering to $100 a share, what do you have? You have a $20 capital loss on stock A ($100 – > $80) and a $20 unrealized gain on stock B ($80 – > $100). Is this beneficial to you? Yes, especially if your current tax rate is higher than your expected future tax rate. Why? Because that $20 capital loss (from stock A) will reduce your current tax bill by a larger amount than what you will pay on your $20 unrealized gain (from stock B) in the future. For example, imagine your tax rate today is 35% and your tax rate in the future is 20%. The $20 capital loss saves you $7 today (35% of $20) yet would only cost you $4 in the future (20% of $20). So you save $3 on taxes without factoring in the time value of money. But do you
The post Conagra: Analyzing the 50% Dividend Cut appeared first on Dividend Power. Conagra (CAG) cut its dividend due to declining volumes, input inflation, high net debt, too much leverage, and broader economic uncertainty. The combined effect pressured operating and financial results. The firm’s dividend has been constant since Q4 FY 2023, and it was eventually cut this year. The share price has fallen significantly since early 2023. Investors sold this dividend stock due to concerns about […]
And just like that, September is well underway. This summer seemed to fly by faster than usual. Read on for my August 2026 goals report and a look ahead at my goals for September. The post It’s time for my August 2026 goals report appeared first on Boomer Eco Crusader.
The HSBC Revolution is the card to point at your contactless spend for 4 miles per dollar, with no annual fee. This review covers exactly what earns the bonus (tap, don’t insert), the whitelisted categories that qualify, the real rate a KrisFlyer flyer gets, and where it fits as the contactless leg of a simple three-card setup. The post HSBC Revolution Review (2026): My 4 Miles Per Dollar Card For Contactless Spend appeared first on […]
In this week’s stock market outlook, Joel Wenger examines the current market trend, price performance, and headline risks.
The hidden curriculum was simple: perform, achieve, don’t feel Emotionally immature parents produce children who learn to perform, achieve, and manage other people’s feelings to earn approval. That is not only a childhood story. It’s medicine. Medical training. Medicine teaches […]
A new season, and a new season of financial lessons. Big news around here – my teenagers got their first “real” jobs!! They were both hired as seasonal workers at the Pumpkin Patch. It’s only 5 weekends in the month of October, but it’s a perfect first entry-point to the workforce. Caveat: I say “real” job with quotations because they have worked for me (for my business), and also done odd jobs like pet-sitting and babysitting. But this is the first W2 position in their lives. I love that it’s short-term because we have a pretty packed schedule in-between all the new High School events (football games! dances!) and their sports schedules. It’s weekends-only, and only for 5 weeks. Even so, this is “big money” for them! The minimum wage in Arizona is $15.15/hour and, boy, do they each have dollar signs in their eyes, eagerly awaiting the Pumpkin Patch opening! Suddenly, I realized we’ve entered a whole new phase of parenting: teaching our kids what to do with money they’ve earned themselves. This raises all sorts of questions for me and I’d love to solicit advice from those of you who have gone before. ? How much should they save? Should I require them to save a certain percentage, or let them have free rein of how they save or spend their money? Should they invest in their Roth IRAs? How much? They already have Roth IRA accounts since they work for me, and I ensure deposits are made into their accounts from their earnings. But now that they have a W2 job…should I also encourage/require they invest some of those funds as well? What percentage? Should they have a “giving” requirement? When I was growing up, I remember my parents getting me a piggy bank with 3 distinct categories: saving, tithing, and spending. From an early age, I was encouraged (or…required), to put a portion of my money aside for tithing. I do think there’s a real benefit of giving back to others. Even if it’s not tithing to a church, I’ve encouraged the girls to make donations in the past when they’ve received an influx of money, like for a birthday or Christmas. They’ve donated to our local animal shelter, which has an online Amazon wish list that lets you pick specific items that you want to give to the pets there. So we could do something like that with a small percentage of their money. What do you think? What’s the best savings account(s) for kids? Right now, we’ve just been doing Greenlight cards for the kids (
A reader writes in, asking: “Have you encountered the ‘Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder’ ETFs from Northern Trust? It looks to me that they create an entire TIPS ladder for you, and all you have to do is just buy a single fund. Too good to be true?” Yes, the ETFs in question do create an entire TIPS ladder for you. But there is a catch. We’ll get to that in a moment. Firstly, I want to […]
The month of August 2026 as ended and it was quite the month! The S&P 500 has been down 0.50% over the last month and up 0.27% over the last 5 days. The S&P TSX Composite index has been downup 0.36% over the last month and up 0.06% over the last 5 days. Portfolio Activity Margin Account Activity On July 8, I sold 4 RCI.B.TO 07Aug2026 $54.00 covered call options at $0.07 per contract for a total […]