A few days ago I got an email from QuickTax announcing: “QuickTax, more value now with 8 returns”.  Of course, they forgot to mention that they totally ripped everyone off last year when they reduced the number of returns from 5 down to 2.  Now they increase the number of returns up and we are supposed to jump up and down?  I don’t think so.  Last year, I purchased QuickTax without realizing that the number of returns was too small for my needs.  So, I actually had to go out and either buy more licenses of QuickTax (not likely!) or buy another product.  I chose to purchase UFile mainly because of the price.  Sure, it was a different way to do the tax return but, you know what?  Previous years QuickTax forms were imported fine, the return got done and it cost less than QuickTax.  I’m also thinking about not spending anything for tax software and using studiotax instead.

Whichever way I decide, one thing is certain, Intuit will not be receiving any more of my money.

Categories: Finance
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No, not the mint.  CSI started it’s 9th season last week with a great conclusion to last years Warrick cliffhanger.  It is nice to see William Petersen getting some credit after 8 years (for example, here and here).  Despite the character’s introverted nature, his portrayal of Grissom has been the heart of the show since the debut episode.

The first episode of season 9 was one of the best single episodes in recent memory (the miniature killer arc was great from season 7) and Petersen’s performance was masterful in its controlled emotion.  In the opening scene, Grissom’s clenched jaw communicates so much.

Categories: TV
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Heather Mallick’s September 5th column (now removed) caused quite the backlash against her and the CBC.  Initially the CBC stood behind the hatchet job article.  On September 25th, the CBC Ombudsman, Vince Carlin, issued his review of the matter. He agrees that the article offers little facts to back up the “opinions” (my air quotes) presented in the article.  He also notes that CBCNews.ca does not present a diverse range of opinions.

Four days later, publisher John Cruickshank offers up…well not quite an apology.  I’m not actually sure what you would call it.  I guess the best would be an admission of judgment error.  On the plus side, Mr. Cruickshank indicates that the CBC will attempt to expand it’s diversity of opinions.

I think that is a good step.  By all means let the CBC present opinions but let’s focus on the ideas, reasoning and thoughts behind those opinions and not on how people look, what gender they are or what their family is like. And if opinions are presented, then please present a wide range of opinions from all sides.

It seems like the least we could ask from Canada’s public broadcaster.

Categories: Politics
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Misandronist: A person who hates men.

Perhaps I do not read enough left wing feminists because I’ve never had a need for a word that expressed a hatred of men.

Well, that changed today when I read Heather Mallick’s column on cbc.ca.

I can’t recall reading an article on a mainstream news site that was so full of ad hominem attacks, insults, and what I can only describe as hate.  All that was missing was some cursing.  Oh wait — it also had that too.  A small sampling:

It’s possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman…I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen…

In my opinion, this is insulting to not only Republicans but to every person with any kind of intellectual integrity.  The hatchet job article also goes on to say:

• Palin isn’t even a female
• Implies Palin is an Alaskan Hillbilly and white trash
• Palin looks like  a toned down porn actress
• The Palin’s are terrible at parenting

There is more, but I won’t repeat it here.

Even worse than the content of the article itself is that fact that since this is published by the CBC that these sentiments are, in effect, being paid for by the citizens of Canada.  It is truly disgraceful that the CBC would allow this to be published on their site.  I am all for free speech but this article would be more at home on someone’s left wing personal blog and is not the type of reporting that a serious news agency like the CBC should be supporting with Canadian’s tax dollars.

Categories: Politics
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I recently upgraded my laptop hard drive from 80 GB to 160 GB.  You may be in a similar situation to me where your laptop is a little older and the drive is running out of space so you bought a 2.5″ external hard drive to help out.  What I found was that the extra space is nice but I actually didn’t need the entire 160 GB to be portable.  So, I decided to swap the drives (80 GB is still pretty good to take with you).

The procedure was quite simple:

• Clear the mobile hard drive of content
• Clone the drive
• Swap the drives

Of course, the devil is in the details.  Removing content from the mobile drive is quite simple.  Cloning the drive was also pretty simple.  To do this I used Acronis Migrate Easy for Windows XP.  It is not free, but a free trial is available so if this is a one time clone then the trial will work fine since it has full functionality.  The software worked great, the only limitation was since I was cloning to a larger drive the resizing and repartitioning options were a not as flexible as I would have liked.   That deficiency could probably be fixed after the fact using partitioning software (e.g. Partition Magic etc.).  In the end, it cost me about 40 MB of space which is not a big issue and not worth trying to fix.

Swapping the drives can be the tricky part.  My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1300 and removing the hard drive was straight forward.  The external drive was a Lacie 2.5″ Mobile Hard Drive.

The external drive can be a wild card since each one is different and it can be hard to tell how to open the case.  Luckily with the Lacie there are 4 screws on each side (these can be seen in the large image).  When all 8 screws are removed the top and bottom of the drive separate giving good access to the actual hard drive.  From there it is just a matter of unscrewing the drive, placing the new drive in the dell chassis and replacing the chassis in the bottom of the laptop.  Then boot up and hopefully everything goes fine.  If there are issues, then replace the original hard drive.

A good overview of the process can be found here.

Categories: Tech
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The May 2008 issue of MoneySense magazine contained an article entitled “The Next Buffetts”.  The article posed the question, “who is the next great Buffett-like investor”? The article then went on to list four potential candidates.  On the face of it, a list of four seems like it must be too small a pool of candidates.  That is not surprising — this is
MoneySense magazine and is not exactly known for it’s in depth articles.  (That is not an insult; they do their job very well, IMO.)

The four candidates were: Prem Watsa, Tim McElvaine, Dr. Michael Burry, and Ian Cumming. Prem Watsa seemed like a good choice but Tim McElvaine seemed like a stretch to me.  Another name that could be on that list that popped into my head was Tom Stanley.

Tom Stanley, 53, is the founder and Portfolio Manager of Resolute Funds.

He started the Resolute Growth Fund in 1993 and, in 2006, when he found regulations were making it difficult to run his fund, he closed it and created a private mutual fund, Resolute Performance Fund, in order to avoid disclosure regulations.

Best Call

Resolute Growth Fund produced annual average returns of 29.63% from 1993-2006.  The Performance Fund has actually improved on this stellar performance returning an average annual return of 47.09% (as of June 24, 2008).

Worst Call

Results can vary year to year with occasional large drawdowns (30%+).  Also, 2007 was a losing year with a loss of 5.1%.

Why He’s Like Buffett

• He eats his own cooking — he is the largest investor in his fund.
• Stanley eschews the crowd (his office is in North Toronto away from Bay Street) and is a contrarian investor.
• Does not believe in diversification; he goes with his best ideas and typically will hold only 10-20 stocks.
• He’s thrifty.  Resolute runs a tight ship with only a few employees and a minimalist office with used furniture.

Why He’s Not Like Buffett

• Unlike Buffett, he shuns the media.  For such a sterling track record there are very few published media articles.
• He is a fund manager and not a CEO.  Although, annual fees are low for this type of investment: 3% MER with no performance fees.
• Stanley does not subscribe to one specific investment style.  He is flexible like John Templeton rather than subscribing exclusively to Buffett’s value approach.

For more information on Tom Stanley’s Philosophy consult his site.

Categories: Finance
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Firefox 3.0 was released yesterday to great success with 8 million downloads.  So much so that the demand brought the mozilla download servers down intermittently;  it took quite a bit of patience to download.  (To be fair, they sort of begged people to crash their servers with their desire for a world download record.  )  After only a day of playing with the new version, I really like it.  The new UI is nice but my favorite feature (so far) is the increased performance I’m seeing.  I’m not talking about any Javascript benchmarks but what I care about — how fast the pages I visit load and render.  GMail and my customized google home page are rendering noticeably faster.

It feels great to install a software upgrade that actually delivers a better product instead of a more bloated product chock-full of useless features that I will never use.  Psst, I’m looking at you Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Categories: Tech
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A previous post discussed my embracing of quantitative analysis and presented an end of year update. The system is now over a year old and I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the system and see how it has been doing over the last year.

*To see what the system is holding at any time (along with delayed quotes) consult the side bar for a list of current holdings.

Over the whole year, I have tweaked the system about 3 times. I have also started using walk forward analysis to tune the system parameters. My plan is to re-optimize yearly based on the prior 2 years worth of data. This interval seems to be effective in optimizing the parameters.

Results

The system was begun on May 23, 2007 and has performed quite well!

Performance from May 23, 2007 – June 1, 2008:

System 23%
S&P/TSX Composite index 4%

As one stock pundit would say, that’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. I’m glad that the system has done well but the effect of luck on a short sample size cannot be discounted. Translation: it’s better to be lucky than good. I hope that over the years I can be both.

Winners and losers are even at 50% each which is inline with historical testing. POT has been the biggest winner by far (up more than 150%) followed by TIM which has doubled. Although to be fair, I did get stopped out of TIM for a 20% loss prior to the big gain. The worst performer of the first year was VNX with a loss of 29%.

Categories: Finance
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I see this year that QuickTax 2007 has lowered the number of returns (over $25,000 net income) that can be processed from 5 to 2. You can buy extra returns for $15 each ($10 for Basic). Basically, to get the same 5 returns you got last year you need to dish out $85! That’s a ridiculous increase and their defense is laughable.

Needless to say, I won’t be buying QuickTax next year.

Categories: Finance
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Well, 2008 is upon us and I wanted to take some time to look back at 2007. From an investment point of view, that is.

This was the year I embraced quantitative analysis. My main goal was to eliminate emotion from my trading. A complete list of “bad behaviors” I was attempting to exorcise would be another post of it’s own. So I set out to develop a trading system of my own.

I stumbled on Amibroker and used that as my platform. As an aside, I’ve since looked at some other products (that is a subject for another day) but none has been able to touch Amibroker for speed or for price.

The system is loosely based on the Flare Out Growth Model by John Markman which I had followed during the late 90’s bubble. The system will only go long stocks over $3 on the TSX.

Results

The system was begun on May 23, 2007 and has performed well — although not as well as I had hoped.

Performance from May 23, 2007 – Dec. 31, 2007:

System                  10.3%
S&P/TSX Composite index -2.4%

So, I am outperforming the index by a fair margin which is good. On the downside, the maximum drawdown was a gut wrenching 24% during the August sub-prime meltdown.

As noted, there are weaknesses in the system so I’m hoping that my good fortune continues into 2008. Current positions can be tracked here.

Categories: Finance
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