ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
Garth Turner
A best-selling Canadian author of 14 books on economic trends, real estate, the financial crisis, personal finance strategies, taxation and politics. Nationally-known speaker and lecturer on macroeconomics, the housing market and investment techniques. He is a licensed Investment Advisor with a fee-based, no-commission Toronto-based practice serving clients across Canada.
February 5th, 2021 | And the Street Ran Red
The Greater Fool - American economist Allison Schrager had some interesting things to say about GameStop, Robinhood and the testo-drenched mob over at WallStreetBets on Reddit. People confuse investing with gambling. So maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to own stocks. “Investing in individual stocks is risky, and most people would be better off owning an index fund. If they […]
February 4th, 2021 | Juiced
The Greater Fool - This will be a rutting season unlike any other. But will the hormonal beasts pawing and trampling their way through the suburban underbrush be making wise nesting decisions? Maybe not. Let’s review the facts. Non-urban real estate has been goosed beyond reason by the slimy little pathogen. Houses in godforsaken places like Abbotsford and Scugog, […]
February 3rd, 2021 | Empathy City
The Greater Fool - Some weeks ago there were 14 condo units for sale in a prime low-rise, downtown, chi-chi 416 building. Then, in January, just a couple. Now, zero. The average selling price-per-foot vacillated wildly. From a thousand bucks last summer, it dipped briefly as low as $750. The final couple of sales were back to a grand. […]
February 2nd, 2021 | Careful What You Ask For
The Greater Fool - An addendum to yesterday’s tale of cowboy capitalism, boomeresque youth and hot wheels. Besides starting a business and buying a giant hunk of steel and displacement, Dorothy and I also built a home four and a half decades ago. Granted, it wasn’t much. We got the lot for peanuts, since it was a bald knoll […]
January 29th, 2021 | The Last Laugh
The Greater Fool - Avaricious day traders, mostly young, often angry, definitely ageist and iconoclastic have been whacking financial markets. The combo of social media, fun trading apps, Covid quarantine boredom and a pervasive moister angst have detached many stock prices from the assets behind them. Suddenly, rules don’t matter. Yesterday was all about GameStop. That saga continues. Plus […]
January 28th, 2021 | The Revolutionaries
The Greater Fool - What came first? The app or the attitude? The big story is not about GameStop, Blackberry, AMC or whatever single stock gets blown up next. It’s about sentiment and technology, and how both (especially the former) just made dabbling in individual equities more suicidal. Whatever the outcome, it will be drenched in the bodily fluids […]
January 27th, 2021 | Losing It
The Greater Fool - Is this the perfect storm? Maybe. Probably. In most cities, yeah. Early-2021 could bring the orgiastic, hedonistic, emotional apex of an already-vibrating housing market to a shuddering climax. (I require a small rest after writing that.) Why? And how is this affecting otherwise rational people? Five things to keep in mind. First, CBs have crashed […]
January 26th, 2021 | The Homewreckers
The Greater Fool - “Never,” says Sam, “did I think this would happen.” He’s been a car guy for years. These days he flogs used vehicles at a big Toyota dealership in the stormy heart of Mississauga, the city-burb of Toronto with a population of about 800,000. And lately, not much traffic. “Normally a Corolla flies off this lot […]
January 25th, 2021 | Hey Snowflakes…
The Greater Fool - In researching the latest dance moves on TikTok (did you realize Michael Jackson is back?) over the weekend, a poignant vid popped up. A twentysomething girl stared into her iPhone and asked wrinklies, paleos and half-dead Boomers to share their stories about bygone hard times. Things seem so scary and uncertain, she said. Was it […]
January 24th, 2021 | The Target
The Greater Fool - My great-grandfather, Ebenezer Vining Bodwell, seems like a cool dude. He went to Ottawa as an MP in Canada’s first Parliament (1867). Later he ran Ontario’s Welland Canal and afterwards took over the books of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. That eventually led him to Vancouver in 1887 (a year after the city was incorporated), where […]
January 22nd, 2021 | The Frenzy
The Greater Fool - The pound poll, results posted here yesterday, had a sample size over 5,000. Rarely do surveys in Canada query that many people. Of course, none of you were randomly selected, since that would be far too frightening. But, still, it’s a mess of folks. And the numbers confirm suspicions this blog has held for a […]
January 21st, 2021 | All About You
The Greater Fool - Looks like the typical blog dog is a 40ish-something professional earning above-average income who’s pro-vax and upon whom the slimy little pathogen has showered a heap of new net worth. Students don’t come here. Retirees are relatively scarce. And a majority scurried home when the virus arrived, then made their dogs deliriously happy by staying […]
January 20th, 2021 | Tale of Two
The Greater Fool - It’s been an economic crisis like no other. For the first time in a century we locked down whole cities. Provinces, even. Travel restrictions. Bars, eateries, hair salons, gyms, arenas, shops, theatres all shut. Never in our lifetimes have the streets been full of people in masks or has transit ridership plunged 90%. Entertainment, tourism […]
January 19th, 2021 | The Impossible
The Greater Fool - Recall that poll noted here yesterday showing 65% of Canadians are unconcerned about interest rates? They don’t care because they think the cost of money cannot rise. Ever. And the steerage section agrees. The belief that mortgages at just 1.5% (the lowest in history) will endure seems almost universal. And the arguments are consistent: (a) […]
January 18th, 2021 | The Infected
The Greater Fool - John says he started worrying after his buddy picked up one of those irritating snowmobile-on-water things that had been purchased back in November. At that time the dealership said it had already chewed through a third of its 2021 inventory. “I’m in the market for a new boat myself,” he tells me, “so after hearing […]
January 15th, 2021 | Pay Up
The Greater Fool - Insane. It’s the word du jour. This aptly describes real estate in cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and all of the bubbly burbs and hot hick towns in their watersheds. Prices are insane. Buyers are insane. Bidding wars insane. And, of course, mortgage rates are pure insanity. As central banks have moved to save us […]
January 14th, 2021 | Oh Boy
The Greater Fool - Deep in the concrete wilds of north-central Mississauga, on a street with towering 8-foot-high trees, driveways teeming with minivans and endless vistas of same-brick mass-built houses, she sits. This attached rowhouse (20 feet wide) was listed recently for $785,000 – slightly under market (the previous high on the street being a few weeks ago – […]
January 13th, 2021 | Tough Love
The Greater Fool - Ontario’s conflicted premier locked down the province this week. Well, sort of. Public health skeptics say little has been done to change people’s behaviours and, after all, Costco and Wal-Mart are still open. The subway’s still running. Maskless families are still jamming up the parks. And, yup, the infections are still rising, in the LTC […]
January 8th, 2021 | Assumptions
The Greater Fool - House sales in Calgary jumped 40% last month. Yeah, Calgary. This comes while GTA deals surged 65% with more than a 50% real estate bump in Comrade Premier Horgan’s YVR. This is significant. Not good, just pivotal. Scores of Canadian families are busy shovelling even more of their net worth into a single assets, and […]
January 6th, 2021 | Deal with It
The Greater Fool - Remember how a certain pathetic blog told you a month or two ago that big-city condos, germy, unloved and forlorn, were maybe a deal? Well, guess what? In the autumn there were 14 units available in a prime low-rise building in the very heart of Toronto’s financial district. Most were one-bedders listed by owners/landlords who […]
January 5th, 2021 | El Predicto
The Greater Fool - Covid 2.0. Trump. Lockdowns. Proud Boys. Vax cock-up. * Sigh* And here we thought 2021 would be so… different. Wiggly and joylessly benign like a new pup. Instead we’re getting a wizened cur with hunks of red torso hanging from its chops. But wait. The year’s only a few days old. Let’s have faith that […]
January 4th, 2021 | The Little Big Deal
The Greater Fool - Unless we completely fall off a cliff (not happening), stuff will be worth a lot more in twenty of thirty years. In the course of those decades it’s a sure thing Canadians will face a bunch more tax, since the legacy of Covid & Mr. Socks will be long-lasting, and ugly. Meanwhile life just gets […]
January 3rd, 2021 | The Forecast
The Greater Fool - Whap! This new year starts with an abrupt knock to the side of the head. Oh yeah, it’ll be a better twelve months than the last dozen. But 2021 will not be calm. Here are some of the things that you should prepare for, or at least watch in bemusement… The first week of the […]
January 1st, 2021 | The Plan
The Greater Fool - New Year ’s Day. The old calendar is trashed. Nobody will regret seeing the butt-end of 2020. But wait. How did the worst year in a generation (or two) treat investors? What’s the score coming out of this satanic mess of a dumpster fire annum? As you know, 2020 started off all shiny and hopeful, […]
December 31st, 2020 | HNY
The Greater Fool - In twenty-twenty this pathetic blog posted 364 columns (missed one last week – suck it up) containing about over 290,000 words, of which far too many were ‘Covid’, ‘virus’, ‘pathogen’, or ‘pandemic’. There are now 703,200 comments published here. Four irritating posters were banned, one was suspended pending a note from his mom while anti-maskers […]