Practically Investing
Smart Investment Techniques Your Neighbour Doesn’t Know
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Baseball is one of those sports built on strategy, statistics, hotdogs and keg-beer with long strings of time between spurts of action. Being slightly ADHD, it helps to have a little skin in the game to keep things lively. I always favour the home team despite the odds, just because I like to belong to the native crowd. When you’re in the ‘hood you don’t want to ruffle too many feathers and the conversations with the volunteer ushers that meander through the glory days of summer, are always pro-home team. Last year, I was in Chicago with a gaggle of CFA charterholders with a free Sunday afternoon. We piled onto the subway and headed down to Wrigley Field to see the Cubbies face the Braves. The odds were 7 to 1 for the away team but my rule is impervious. I placed a series of $5 bets with several of my colleagues, taking the other side of whatever their choice was, but finally ending $5 net long on the Cubs. In total, I had $15 for Atlanta and $20 for Chicago. You might be wondering why I didn’t just bet one $5 lot on the home team and leave it at that. Well, imagine the fun of being able to text winning taunts to 3 different people when the Braves were up and a whole different group when the Cubs pulled ahead.
I probably could have had just about as much fun being net neutral on the outcome of the game but when the home team wins, especially as the underdog, legitimately participating in the stadium fever is worth the risk. This isn’t an ideal example of market neutral, only because there were just two possible outcomes. It was too perfectly neutral so not very interesting. I could have gone home if it wasn’t for the extra $5 for the Cubs, the ice-cold draft and the smell of summer in Wrigley Field. It would have been much more interesting if there were multiple teams or investment options offset by a basket of the alternatives or if I had borrowed the $5 from a friend to place the bet. Then playing the options on a variety of outcomes becomes much more interesting.
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About the Book
If the last financial crisis cost you money, you may be wondering whether you should continue investing in the market. After all, you have bills to pay and a job to keep—and you can’t spend all your free time crunching numbers.
With the help of an expert, you can control your financial future by making small shifts in what you are already doing. Author Coreen T. Sol, Chartered Financial Analyst, gives you the tools you need to
• avoid mistakes that could cost you money;
• find good alternative investments;
• maximize the benefits of a retirement plan; and
• write your own investment policy statement.
This guidebook provides bold-faced terms and a glossary, along with instructions that make understanding the market fun and easy. You’ll have to do some homework, but you can start taking simple steps to accomplish your dreams with the guidance in Practically Investing.
About the Author
Coreen T. Sol, CFA, is a portfolio manager with more than twenty years of experience in private wealth management. She has also been a teller at the Royal Bank of Canada; managed a bank branch in New Westminster, British Columbia; served as an investment adviser at RBC Dominion Securities; and managed portfolios through National Bank Financial and CIBC Wood Gundy. She lives in Kelowna with her three children.