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Happy Halloween you Lions.

As you know this Journal is 100% free, except for your time. Once in a while ad opportunities popup like this one from 1440, which I subscribe to personally, it is a good daily news aggregator (also a free read). $1.30/click so perhaps I’ll get to buy a cheeseburger this weekend.

Onto business…

• A rant on the legal age of investors and why it needs to be lowered.

• Nvidia hitting $5 trillion dollar value and I share what my investment exposures are if you’re interested. Please feel free to ask any questions. Nothing is ever one size fits all…

• Finally, I was at the Calgary Real Estate Forum this week and Alberta is standing out vs the rest of the country.

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Personal Finance

You can get a driver’s license at sixteen.

You can enlist in the military at eighteen.

You can legally start working—and paying taxes—at 13.

But you can’t open your own investing account until you’re nineteen?

What the hell is that about? You can earn income, pay the government their tax, even die for your country, but you can’t buy a single stock or an ETF. Is that a joke?

Yes there are work arounds, like RESPs and in-trust accounts that parents can set up. But considering only 50% of “mature” adults actually have an investing account, it’s clear there is already enough friction in the system that the needle doesn’t change anyway.

You can’t open a TFSA, can’t buy an index fund, can’t learn the one skill that compounds your freedom over time which is ownership.

The only thing you might be able to do is get a parent to open you a bank account and buy a GIC. A GIC? Those are for old people!

You can pay GST on your candies, but not participate in capitalism. What lesson does that teach?

Old habits die hard, and by nineteen, habits are largely set. Time value of money—the single most important financial concept which we discuss at length here—is slipping away while we pat ourselves on the premise of “protecting” our youth.

We aren’t protecting them. We are holding them back. Maybe its an unconscious way of saying we are jealous and scared of them doing better too soon.

Whatever it is, if you’re old enough to work and pay taxes, you’re old enough to invest. Period.

Why does it feel like I’m the first one saying this?

Time for a change in my opinion.

Start talking about it with your friends, if you know an MLA, them too. Kids should get some goddamn ownership over their future. Let them feel what it’s like to own something, to see compounding in real time while their minds are still forming.

I think we owe it to the next gen to do something about it.

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Stock Markets

NVIDIA just hit a $5,000,000,000,000 valuation, which is more than the GDP of every country in the world, except for China and the US.

Clearly a lot of positive expectations for the future of AI and the chips that NVIDIA manufactures.

After a historic run unlike any other business in history, does this mean it will continue to lead the charge? Do you sell all your SP500 and low cost ETFs and put it all on one company?

The truth is, while tech companies are moving fast and breaking changing things, nobody knows how it’ll actually shake out. AI is no doubt going to permeate the world in more ways that we can even imagine. You can’t argue against 4 billion users now interacting with some form of AI already.

But when people start saying, this is the only stock to own, I can’t help but be skeptical.

How much can one truly know about NVIDIA’s specific future of revenue or how this whole ecosystem will play out? It’s nothing more than speculation. True, sometimes a lucky gut feeling will make someone ultra rich if they bet it correctly, but that’s a lottery ticket.

Personally, despite a big part of me that has an urge to drop everything an put it all on red, I’ve been able to mostly control myself through the years avoiding fads by keeping to my base allocation, which doesn’t change much.

• 45% private real estate—I’m in the business, and it pays me.

• 25% SP500 & cash—for growth and liquidity (i.e. optionality).

• 25% Bitcoin—see Issue #80.

• 5%—Private equity/individual stocks—for fun and torque.

That’s it. My bet is on America and capitalism. Everything else is noise.

Doesn’t mean your allocations should match mine. Everyone will have a unique risk tolerance and ability to take risk, which I discuss at length in my investing course.

It is up to you to decide how to use the information. Hopefully it helps!

Real Estate

I just got back from the Calgary Real Estate Forum and as usual Alberta feels alive.

Definitely far better than the home province of BC which broadly feels un-investable.

Better cap rates, better growth opportunities, lower costs, better government, and no first nations trying to take over fee-simple land rights (see Home equity 'plummeted': Anger erupts at Richmond's Aboriginal title meeting).

Here, we can still deploy capital and actually see good cash on cash returns and upside to hit our investment targets.

The energy sector is holding firm and Tariffs won’t affect it that much. The Tech sector is growing, in migration is happening and as a result business and industry activity is looking very positive. Take for instance the rate of industrial vacancy which continues to go down and businesses are opening and moving to the province which is resulting in solid leasing velocity (first hand experience with our industrial properties).

Certainly there are some risks on the horizon. Office vacancy is still a major drag and youth unemployment the highest in the country. Policy needs to be set so that we attract more investment and create more jobs for young people to be apart of.

The CEO of a large Calgary investment firm is lobbying for an elimination altogether of capital gains taxes. Unlikely, but I like the pressure being put on our representatives.

And of course, there’s a lot of talk about the AI boom and all the energy required to power the data centres and how Alberta is uniquely positioned to play a major roll (cheap access to energy and a cold climate).

But this could easily pass us by as the time to build new energy resources and all the related infrastructure requires not just a lot of investment dollars but approvals by multiple levels of government and therefore points of friction for said dollars to arrive.

All that said, Alberta is one of the best places to invest in Canada given everything else happening in the world.

1 Quote

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

Oscar Wilde

A Question

What do you think about the legal age of investing issue? Pros/cons of lowering the age?