Ellen's Investment Club

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker Session May 27, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference 1) Are you investing primarily in individual stocks? Most club members seem to use a strategy of buying and holding shares as long as they continue to see the metrics they’re looking for – rising revenues, higher net profit and earnings per share (EPS), annual dividend growth, reasonable debt levels and enough free cash flow to stay afloat in bad times. But despite the eye-popping numbers that hot companies post quarterly, and despite explosive excitement among  business journalists, we have to remember that great stocks often stumble. Not everything going on behind the scenes is reported in the media. Secrets may be kept for years, such as TD Bank’s hiccups in its major expansion to the United States and not training staff well enough in avoiding money launderers – resulting in a $3 billion (U.S.) fine after pleading guilty to multiple charge...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session April 22, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference 1) We originally scheduled a timely guest speaker to kick off the meeting. Ben Kaplan, a Toronto journalist, is a founder and editor of KIND magazine, which is distributed in Canada’s legal weed shops.  He’s also the author of a new book called Catch A Fire:  The Blaze and Bust of the Canadian Cannabis Industry (published  by Dundurn Press in January 2025). Here are a couple of links with some reviews: https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459754652-catch-a-fire https://www.amazon.ca/Catch-Fire-Canadian-Cannabis-Industry/dp/1459754654 Please note: You can now buy a KIndle ebook version at $9.99 from Amazon.ca. That’s a great price for a 300-page book with a very detailed history of the past six and a half years since former PM Justin Trudeau’s legalization of marijuana in October 2018.  Acting as a cannabis historian, “Ben Kap...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Ales Eisner March 18, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference We have a guest speaker, a self-taught investor, to kick off the meeting at 7 pm. Ales Eisner is an early retiree, having left his IT job at age 48. He keeps busy with leisure pursuits and writing about investing at his website, https://canadianmoneytalk.ca , as well as acting as a mentor for people who need money advice. He’s not a certified financial planner, so he charges a reasonable fee of $50 an hour to work with them. My background is in IT. I achieved financial independence in my early 40’s, and stopped working in IT at 46. I have a net worth of over six million Canadian dollars, and live off the proceeds of my portfolio more than comfortably. I would like to help you achieve the same time freedom and financial independence that I have. You can find him doing videos on social media at https://canadianmoneytalk.ca/contact , (YouT...

Guest Speaker Session Insurance for Investors: Growing and Safeguarding Your Wealth January 21, 2025, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference In our next  meeting, we will talk about insurance. Please don’t yawn. The insurance  industry  has been dominating the news lately, because  of extreme weather episodes that have destroyed all the homes in residential communities, such as  Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. In Ontario, insurers are facing challenges from auto thieves who steal cars from homeowners’ garages and driveways. Criminals don’t need keys to break into vehicles. Instead, they buy devices to communicate by electronic signals with the car owner’s wireless key fob. There’s also an increase in violent carjackings, where armed robbers attack drivers and passengers to gain control of the car and drive it away before the police give chase.  Some motorists use tracking devices to follow their cars down to the waterfront where thieves are putting the vehicl...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session December 17, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference 1) The Globe and Mail's Report on Business published an article by Dan Hallett, vice-president of research at Highview Financial Group, on Sept. 5. He was raising a concern that probably applies to many of our investing club members.  The headline is "Aging DIY investors must plan for succession." Here’s a link: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/df41b4d21dc8e30953dba041b19a5fdd36b3f6c0eecbb54437f85d9413326212/MI2KLSWP2RC4XATRMWDDXJY7Z4/ Last week, Steadyhand Investment Funds did a blog post on the same topic, with the headline, "DIY Investing? How to ensure your family isn't left holding the bag." Here's a link: https://www.steadyhand.com/personal_investing/2024/11/14/diy-investing-how-to-ensure-your-family-isnt-left-holding-the/ Dan Hallett suggests that DIY investors in their 60s, 70s and 80s should consider movi...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session October 22, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve agenda We have been offered a speaker from a well-known Canadian economic research firm, Rosenberg Research & Associates, established in January 2020. Founder David Rosenberg is a fixture on social media and mainstream media with a reputation as being bearish ahead of the crowd.  You can follow him on X.com (@EconguyRosie)  He also has a YouTube channel under the name, Rosenberg Research. You can read his bio and see what he’s doing at https://www.rosenbergresearch.com . “Dave’s Menu of Products,” it says, “are tailored to the active investor.” When I got an email with a free trial offer, I decided to sign up. The firm’s flagship publication, Early Morning with Dave, arrives weekdays at 7:41 am. His son Jacob, who works with him, said his dad starts writing it at 4:10 a.m. each day. The Oct. 17 edi...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Ryan Modesto, CFA, CEO, 5i Research September 24, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M By videoconference 1. Member introduction (10 minutes) 2. Guest Speaker : Ryan Modesto, CFA, Chief Executive Officer at 5i Research, portfolio manager for the i2i Long/Short US Equity Fund. Ryan will give the same presentation he did at the MoneyShow Toronto on Sept. 14. It’s called The Anatomy of Big Market Winners and the Investor That Can Hold Them . At the end, he will provide a list of potential stock market winners that 5i Research owns. (45 minutes plus 10-15 minutes for Q&A) 3. A discussion of the club’s Fantasy Portfolio, by Tom Loftus. How well has it done compared to the benchmarks? Which stocks have done very well and which stocks have lagged behind? Do we have any suggestions about dropping some stocks and adding others to the portfolio? (30 to 45 minutes) Message from Tom last week by email: The Fantasy Portfo...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Kanwal Sarai, Simply Investing Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Our guest speaker is Kanwal Sarai, an Ottawa-based dividend investor who runs an online service called Simply Investing, https://www.simplyinvesting.com . He has a platform that applies his investing approach to more than 6,000 stocks every day and shows you the best stocks to invest in and which ones to avoid. 4. Here are the 10 rules he uses to filter out the best quality stocks that are also priced at a low level. To geta 10 out of 10 grade on his Simply Investing platform, a stock must pass the following 10 criteria: Company must have EPS (earnings per share) growth of 8% or more The EPS must have increased at least 8 times in the last 20 years Company must have dividend growth of 8% or more The payout ratio must be 75% or less Company debt must b...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. No guest speaker that night, so we will spend time talking about the new Fantasy Portfolio of mainly growth stocks that we set up at last month’s club meeting. Tom Loftus, also a member of the Ottawa Share Club club, will describe how the members manage their Fantasy Pre-Retirement and Retirement investing Portfolios since 2016. Here’s how it works: The members choose the initial stocks. The portfolio is monitored on an ongoing basis. Changes are made when members suggest trades to improve the portfolio’s performance. The improvement recommendations are voted on by the entire membership and the approved changes are implemented.  These portfolios are designed to demonstrate the real issues members are confronted with when managing their own investments and savings. “Our current stock contest ...

   Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: David Trahair, CPA, CA Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Our guest speaker is  David Trahair , CPA, CA, David is a personal finance writer, trainer and e-Learning content developer. He is also an author of  six books on personal financial issues , including three national bestsellers. He was a columnist for CPA Magazine from 2014 to 2018 and spoke to a meeting of our club about a decade ago. I was checking out David’s site recently and saw a course that I thought would be helpful for investing novices and more experienced investors as well. It normally takes 3.5 hours and costs $275 for public attendees, but David will give us a shorter version in 45 minutes and answer our questions. His online course is called  The Complete Guide to All Your Investing Options .  Here’s how he describes it: “This...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Ed Rempel, CPA, CMA, CFP Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Our guest speaker is Ed Rempel , CPA, CMA, CFP,  He is a financial blogger , fee-for-service financial planner and tax accountant. He’s not an investment dealer, which means he does not sell investments. Here are six topics he’d like to discuss with us (below). These are Investment lessons he’s learned as a fee-for-service financial planner from preparing over 1,000 comprehensive financial plans. Almost nobody can retire comfortably with a balanced or conservative portfolio. After retiring: The 4% rule for annual withdrawals is more reliable with equities than bonds. High risk of bonds as a long-term investment. With most financial plans, 80% of retirement income is investment growth AFTER retiring. Importance of a growth mindset. High equity focus is a huge benef...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Ellen Roseman will do a presentation about the Beat the TSX (BTSX) strategy. It’s similar to the Dogs of the Dow stock picking strategy devoted to selecting the highest paying dividend stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. How does the BTSX approach work? Find the TSX 60 Index and sort by dividend yield. Select the top 10 yielding stocks of that index provided they have a history of consistent dividend payments. Usually these will be “TURF” stocks (T = telecoms, U = utilities, R = REITs, and F = financials). Avoid companies with any recent dividend cuts, stopping their dividends, etc. Purchase your 10 stocks in equal parts and hold each stock for one year. At this point, your top 10 list is reconstituted and repeated the following year. Repeat annually. Here is the current list of BTSX st...

  Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Keith Richards, ValueTrend Wealth Management Tuesday, January 16, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Our guest speaker is Keith Richards, president, chief portfolio manager and technical analyst at ValueTrend Wealth Management in Barrie, Ont.  He’s a frequent guest on BNN Bloomberg’s Market Call daily show. Here’s a link to his recent visits and stock recommendations: https://www.valuetrend.ca/keith-richards-business-news-network-videos Follow him, @valuetrend, on Twitter/X or sign up for his newsletter, where you’ll find articles like this one from Jan. 10, 2024: https://www.valuetrend.ca/i-think-it-makes-sense-from-both-a-technical-perspective-and-an-increasing-potential-for-heightened-war-activities-to-leg-in-at-least-some-of-our-capital-into-oil-and-gold Keith will give us a 30-minute guide to technical analysis as an investing tool...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, December 19, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introduction 2. Approve Agenda 3. Ellen Roseman will do a short presentation about Canadian bank stocks and their prospects in 2024 Come prepared to speak up for your favourite Canadian bank investment or an ETF you own that holds bank stocks Here’s a good article (with video) by Keith Richards of ValueTrend: Are Canadian Bank Stocks A Good Buy Right Now? 4. Does anyone know of an app called Blossom: Social Investing ? The site promotes discussions with a community of other investors, courses led by favourite content creators and tools to track and analyze your holdings Be part of a community Discuss stocks, ETFs, taxes, personal finance, market news, and more in a community of 70,000 other investors Learn to invest Go from a complete beginner to an advanced investor with fun, Duolingo-style courses led by your favourite con...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, October 17, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. New member introduction We are expecting about half a dozen students from Ellen’s current Investing for Beginners course at U of T. So let’s have everyone introduce themselves, describe the state of their investing skills and give their reasons for joining this club. 2. Approve Agenda 3. Current member introduction Since our club consists of many beginners and a number of very experienced people, let’s ask the “old timers” to say what they have learned about investing after years of buying securities, either with an advisor or on their own. 4. Recent market events Discussion of profitable listings reaching recent 52-week highs or lows and the reasons for such  performance. 5. Ellen's Investment Club Stock Contest Updated chart by Tom Loftus We’ll also look at the Globe and Mail’s stock contest, in which Report on Business reade...

  Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Kim Bolton, President and Portfolio Manager, Black Swan Dexteritas Inc. Tuesday, June 20, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introductions 2. Approve Agenda 3. Guest Speaker: Kim Bolton, President and Portfolio Manager, Black Swan Dexteritas Inc.   Kim Bolton will speak about the ecosystem of artificial intelligence (AI) companies, so we can find publicly traded companies that are AI leaders and likely to grow more quickly 4. Club Survey implementation 5. Recent Market Events  Discussion on profitable listings reaching recent 52-wk highs or lows & reasons for such  performance 6. Ellen's Investment Club Stock Contest 7. What members are buying, selling, or watching? What's the best or/and worst move you made recently Would you do anything differently, why/why not? 8. Next meeting: Tuesday Sept. 19, 2023 7-9 p.m. 9. Adjourn Club contact: EllensDegenera...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introductions 2. Approve Agenda 3. Recent Market events Discussion on profitable listings reaching recent 52-wk highs or lows & reasons for such performance 4. Member Presentations Wendy Kwong: How to identify sector trends & stocks in the market by using Barchart Tom Loftus: Retirement Savings Calculators Presentation 5. Where to find online education and stock picking suggestions for do-it-yourself Canadian investors?  Ellen Roseman has selected a few good sources 6. Ellen's Investment Club Stock Contest 7. What members are buying, selling, or watching? What's the best or/and worst move you made recently? Would you do anything differently, why/why not? 8. Next meeting:  20 June 2023 9. Adjourn Club contact: EllensDegenerates@hotmail.com Club Blogger site: https://ellensinvestment.blogspot.com Club Go...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Guest Speaker: Jean-Paul Bureaud, Executive Director of FAIR Canada Tuesday, April 18, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introductions 2. Approve Agenda 3. Jean-Paul Bureaud, executive director of FAIR Canada (Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights) Discussion on FAIR Canada’s mission to help retail investors, including the challenges with our existing complaint handling system, and new insights from FAIR’s recent research on retail investors Highlights from two recent publications: “Getting your money back: An investor’s guide to navigating Canada’s complaint system” and “FAIR Canada investor survey report,” https://faircanada.ca/publications/ 4. Recent Market events Discussion on profitable listings reaching recent 52-wk highs or lows & reasons for such performance 5. Member Presentations Patrick Dooley: Alimentation Couche-tard (TSE:ATD) and possibly Dollarama ...

Ellen's Investment Club  (Toronto Central Investment Share Club) Regular Session Tuesday, March 21, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 P.M. By videoconference 1. Member introductions 2. Approve Agenda 3. Member Presentations Top Net Income Earners on the TSX (Wendy Kwong) Identifying Top Net Income Earners in each sector on TSX Identifying Top Net Income Earners with potential growth vs Top Net Income Earners with strong dividend payout Why it's important to have both. Why profitable companies are important in growing a portfolio Why diversifying is important to limit risk in an ever-changing market.  Brookfield Corp. (BN on TSX)  (Walter Fernandes)  Brief review of why Patrick Dooley owns Apple, Dollarama, and Aritzia (Patrick Dooley) Apple , a device manufacturer with a strong moat (AAPL on Nasdaq) Dollarama , everything under $5 at these stores (DOL on TSX) Aritzia , clothing retailer  (ATZ on TSX) TradingView.com , Track all markets (David Pyette) TFI International Inc...