Episode 3 – Amazon Eating the Stock Market

In Episode 3 of the Rational Reminder podcast we discussed the following:

• Should you lease or buy your vehicle?
• How are the new mortgage stress tests affecting Canadian real estate?
• Home ownership is not required to build wealth, with a little discipline
• Amazon’s size is not unprecedented
• Successfully investing in growth stocks is really hard
• Consolidation in the Canadian asset management industry
• Independence benefits wealth management clients
• Are backend loads on mutual funds still a thing?
• Fund companies pushing anti-evidence
• Financial advice is about more than just the portfolio
• We are still waiting for lower stock valuations, high inflation, and high interest rates
• If you’re not worried, you don’t have a high expected return
• Are we living in exceptionally uncertain times?
• Small cap and value returns comes from rebalancing

The stories we talked about:

• Report on the Housing and Mortgage Market in Canada
• Federal policies suppressing housing activity, creating a negative shift in sentiment for homebuyers, according to latest consumer report
• Amazon’s eating the world – and the stock market
• Is Amazon Changing the World, and the Stock Market?
• The Most Valuable Companies of All-Time
• TD Bank becomes Canada’s biggest money manager with $792-million deal to buy Greystone Managed Investments
• Banning Embedded Commissions Would Not Have Fixed Financial Advice in Canada
• Transforming Practices in the Wealth Business: A preliminary assessment of the June 2018 CSA reforms to the client-advisor relationship
• Not So Predictable
• In these uncertain times

The charts we talked about:

Source: Financial Market History: Reflections on the Past for Investors Today, CFA Institute

Source: Visual Capitalist