Better "bang for our buck"

[brunt]

I'm not investment-savvy enough to understand that sentence!!

Can someone explain? What is a "trailing stop"?

A "stop loss order" is basically a price that you give to your broker that is an order to sell if the stock falls to that amount. Say you have a share in a company that you bought for $50. It is now trading for $100. You can put a stop loss at $80 so that your stock will be sold in case the stock's price falls.

This is a technique used to preserve your profits in case a stock's price craters.

A "Trailing stop" goes one step further. The point at which a stock will be sold increases as a stock's price increases, but will not decrease as the price decreases.

Let's go a bit further in our example. Your stock is trading at $100 and you put a trailing stop at $80. If the stock falls to $90, nothing changes. But if the stock then increases to $110, your stop will increase to $90 to ensure that you hold onto that extra $10.

There are pluses and minuses to using stops that people have been arguing about until they are blue in the face. Suffice it to say that some people won't trade without them, and others never use them.

[ashedfc]

I believe in using trail stop for very volatile trades (like VXX) it can go up 8%, 10% , 20% in no time, & on the down side I want to be out before its too late.
For me Stop loss has no meaning, I would suggest use only trailing stop. The spread should be based on the kind of stock.
VXX is not a stock (its the measure of volatility, so more bad news is good for VXX, as like last 2 days its up from 20$ to $24 - a nice 20%),

[tetris280]

Try opening an account with Presidents Choice ... They offer many different types of accounts .. but you pay no bank fees .... you also have
access to their account using a CIBC Bank Machine.

As for the interest .... it is pretty pathetic ..no matter where you go...

You open a Presidents Choice Account at any Canadian Superstore ..
Hope this helps ....

I hope somebody can help me with this...

We have a savings account that we needed to open in order to have a joint account, and have quite a bit of money in it already. The thing is, this account doesn't have much return for us, and it's costing us more to make 1 transaction per month than we are getting in interest (ie, last month it cost us 60cents to transfer money to my MIL, and we got 40cents interest on 5K, so we lost 20cents in order to keep 5000$+ in there, pretty sad, eh?! )

Anyway, I'm wondering what kind of account we should put our money in in order to get more "bang for our bucks" as the title mentions... DH deals with HSBC (which is where the joint account is) and I deal with CIBC, and we don't want to have to go to another bank in order to get this done.

Suggestions?

[tetris280]

Try opening an account with Presidents Choice ... They offer many different types of accounts .. but you pay no bank fees .... you also have
access to their account using a CIBC Bank Machine.

As for the interest .... it is pretty pathetic ..no matter where you go...

You open a Presidents Choice Account at any Canadian Superstore ..
Hope this helps ....

[ashedfc]

I believe in using trail stop for very volatile trades (like VXX) it can go up 8%, 10% , 20% in no time, & on the down side I want to be out before its too late.
For me Stop loss has no meaning, I would suggest use only trailing stop. The spread should be based on the kind of stock.
VXX is not a stock (its the measure of volatility, so more bad news is good for VXX, as like last 2 days its up from 20$ to $24 - a nice 20%),

VXX closed at $29.56 (intraday it traded at $31.27 USD). Its almost 50% up from the time I recommended).

[ashedfc]

VXX closed at $29.56 (intraday it traded at $31.27 USD). Its almost 50% up from the time I recommended).

VXX-Canada trading over $37 (its over 85% gain, since I mentioned in my previous blog). 85% gain in less than a month.
ING TFSA would take over 30yrs (or more) to get this kind of gain.

[ahatt]

If you don't want to switch banks, why not look into a Tax-Free Savings Account. They're free, you don't pay tax on the interest you make and most banks offer them.

I just looked on both CIBC and HSBC websites, and this is what their interest rates are for TFSA's:
CIBC's TFSA Tax Advantage Savings account pays 1.25% interest, and the HSBC High Rate Savings account pays 0.80%.

If you don't want to lock away your money in a GIC or other long term investment, a tax-free savings account might be a good option. You always have access to your money, and you get a much better interest rate than the .05% that most banks pay you for savings accounts.

[ashedfc]

Buy Gold in a TFSA account. The gain will be much more than whatever interest rate these banks are offering. over the last 10yrs, Gold has performed more than 500%.
We are witnessing tremendous economic uncertainity, & Gold will continue to outperform against any other investment (GIC, Bond, Cash, anything).

[travelgeek]

Buy Gold in a TFSA account. The gain will be much more than whatever interest rate these banks are offering. over the last 10yrs, Gold has performed more than 500%.
We are witnessing tremendous economic uncertainity, & Gold will continue to outperform against any other investment (GIC, Bond, Cash, anything).

As a financial advisor, you should know better than to advise people to chase the hot stock/sector of the month without proper diversification, especially for such a volatile sector. I've held gold stocks for awhile now and I'm comfortable with the volatility, but others may not be able to sleep at night with the potential negative 10-20+% swings in their portfolio.

[ashedfc]

VXX was an example (it was never a personal recomendation to anyone).
Anyone buying VXX should have already exited their positions by now.
It works as an hedge against long positions.