Hey friends, couple decent rants today:

Thanks to everyone for being here, and welcome to all new readers this week.

Eddie

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Wall Street loves to take our money. The whole gamification of investing and getting rich quick is a highly oiled apparatus that transfers money from impatient gamblers pockets to long term investors.

The more confusing terms, the more chart squigglers, the more “expert analysis”, the better for them. Because it creates issues for the novice investor trying to get into the game.

Inaction out of fear - then impulse and fomo lead to overaction - buy at the top - or sell at the low - while the long term investor gets their bargain purchase or top dollar sale price.

Just look at the last few weeks.

Trump takes out Maduro, then says Iran is next. He literally said it publicly. Then he actually does it - bombs start flying - the critical oil shipping lane comes under pressure and Oil goes on a historic ride higher the likes of which we haven’t seen since pre 2008 Great Recession (any time you say “pre 2008” you are bound to scare some people - but hey - headlines sell news, so naturally they lean that way). Then Trump puts out a tweet saying the war is almost over (?) and boom, the oil price collapses 30% in 24 HOURS!

Let’s not forget we have the tech names getting smoked as AI disruption narrative goes viral. Other notable movement is the incredible tear silver went on last year, only to drop 25% in a single day. And we have Bitcoin which is down 50% from its highs and could fall another 35% if this is a bull trap.

But what if it's not?

See what I’m getting at? There are *thousands* of assets, thousands of tik tok chart squigglers making more money than you (allegedly), thousands of talking heads telling you where you need to be putting your money. And every single one of them sounds convincing until you hear the opposite take five minutes later.

The noise keeps you scared or chasing fast money. Both are bad states; keep money in cash forever, it dies to inflation while the bank makes money lending it out (and taking your monthly inactivity fees). Keep chasing hype stocks - you’ll rotate your portfolio to zero in a matter of months.

New investors want to participate but where do they even start with all the noise? Seasoned investors suffer a similar problem, except they know too much. Analysis paralysis, there are too many scenarios to model, too many podcasts to listen to. So they too end up freezing or chasing the latest hype trend so they don’t feel left behind.

Meanwhile, advisors are charging 1% fees on top of mutual fund fees of 1-2%. That's 2-3% eaten before you've made a dime. Over 30 years, that's hundreds of thousands, even millions, of your dollars transferred to someone else. Another interesting and common tell - most advisors portfolios will look WAY different than their clients, because even the advisor succumbs to idea creep.

Here's what nags at me: it has never been easier to be a DIY investor. Wealthsimple is as easy as using the App Store. The index funds are accessible to anyone with $10. Automations keep emotions at bay.

I launched my course and of the people who signed up, only 30-40% actually finished. It's only 2 hours long, the length of a netflix movie. But they hear "compound interest takes time" and get bored, so they move onto polymarket betting or sports parlays.

But I hate to break it to you, boring works. Slow works. Aesop’s fable is legendary for a reason.

This is exactly why I built the Simply Investing course. No jargon. No chasing hype or trading. Just the boring way I invest that actually works: ETFs, automatic contributions, dividend reinvestment, and patience. Those of you that have taken it and got yourself up and running, congratulations, you’re doin better than 95% of everyone elese.

That’s the rant.

I took some heat over the weekend posting an instagram video about ongoing indigenous land claims in BC. These claims, and the governments simultaneous recognition at the same time are introducing a very high level of uncertainty for British Columbians, further dampening the real estate market (which is already struggling from greater economic and political factors) and scaring away the much needed investment capital that our province needs to develop its resources.

People said things like this to me:

Hmmm… I dunno, I’m just a concerned citizen in BC wondering where this all stops. I’m not an expert, so yes I do often rely on the Fraser Institute for high quality information. They happen to be among Canada’s top think tanks and one that is extremely well regarded on a global scale.

Also, sorry for listening to people like Thomas Isaac who is the Chairman of Cassels Aboriginal Law Group and is a former Chief Treaty Negotiator for the Government of British Columbia. I had the chance to listen to Thomas a few weeks ago at a luncheon and he understands better than most what is actually going on.

And then I get anecdotal comments from people close to me who’ve over heard other people’s opinions of my post, i.e. “wow Eddie is so far off on this, he has no idea what he’s talking about…”

Then I find out they are realtors. Not to go after realtors as a whole, but perhaps there’s a bias, and perhaps even more so if they are relatively younger realtors with struggling business prospects during all this uncertainty - of course they don’t like when another video comes out adding to the uncertainty pile! Realtors want confidence in the market and anything that makes their business more challenging is tough to swallow. I get it.

On the other hand, one of my realtor friends, Steve Saretsky, who isn’t afraid to point out when things are dire or uncertain, just last week interviewed Thomas Isaac on the Loonie Hour Podcast (minutes 23 to 60) to discuss all of this in depth. Highly recommend listening.

The supporters of all these proceedings will say “oh they aren’t coming after private property - so what you are saying is BS.” Maybe, but economics and investment evaluates risk, and when governments leave major legal questions unresolved, risk goes up; invesment pulls back. As such, behind the curtain discussions, negotiations, and the absence of language in these agreements proving that private property is off the table, is the issue! Furthermore we have hard proof from the Cowichan decision that led to Montrose Properties - a multimillion dollar industrial development project in Richmond - now can’t get its bank financing. Try being a home owner or industrial developer if your house falls in that area.

It’s all happening quickly and it’s hard to keep up, so that’s why I lean on experts like FI and Thomas Isaac and others. What stood out most from Tom’s comments on the podcast is not that “the bad evil people are coming for everyone’s house”. It’s the uncertainty. His core point is that Ottawa has recognized Musqueam rights and title within a massive asserted territory, but the agreement does not specify where title actually applies. As he put it: “what is accurate is that we don’t know if the agreement affects private property, because the agreement doesn’t set out where within the Musqueam-asserted territory that the Musqueam hold title.”

Here’s what we know:

My point is not to attack the First Nations. It’s that when governments do things behind the public curtain, and throw fuel on the fire of a extremely difficult real estate market and overall economic situation by making agreements that are legally ambiguous around land, title, and ownership, I get concerned enough to speak out publicly.

Anyway, you can watch the video I posted and make your own conclusions of what I said.

“Give and inch, they’ll take a mile”

—anonymous

All else equal, are you bullish or bearish on BC Residential real estate?

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