T-Mobile G2

Well, it has been over a week and I’ve successfully unlocked my T-Mobile G2 phone and ported my number with Mobilicity, Canada’s only 3.5 G network running on 2100 mhz frequency. I was originally with Rogers, but after unsuccessfully waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I quickly said it was time to give another company a chance.

After using the iPhone, the Xperia X10 and now HTC’s G2, I’m confident to say that this is the best phone purchase I’ve ever made. The G2 comes with the stock version of Google Android 2.2 Froyo, making surfing the web like surfing on a desktop computer. I find myself lying in bed, using my phone instead of my laptop now. I’ve always heard that the smart phone will replace the computer, but now I’m starting to really see it. Let me explain why the G2 rocks…

Steve Jobs has been ranting and raving how HTML 5 is the next best thing. He’s simply wrong and stubborn. Flash is great and works like an absolute charm on my Android phone. So whatever smoke Jobs has been blowing, Google just proved him wrong. I would love to see him eat his words now. The battery life is fantastic on my G2 and Flash does not seem to effect it. In addition, Jobs kept mentioning how Adobe was not built for the touch screen. Well, Google sure found a way around it. All the hot spots on the flash element work flawlessly with touch and when you double click on the Flash item, it full screens!  Can it be any better?

Mobilicity

So with Android now supporting flash, multi touch, a superb market store, and all the bells and whistles you can find anywhere else, why would anyone pay for an over expensive, closed minded iPhone? I don’t get it. They say the app store is better, but I haven’t been able to find one relevant app on the iPhone that I can’t find for my Android. I know Apple users are die hards, but they are simply becoming irrational and failing to realize that the superior product is no longer Apples.

As for Mobilicity, their network is definitely choppy and their data connection is far from stable. Once you leave the coverage area, Mobilicity works great, aside from the fact data roaming is extremely expensive. If you are looking for a cheap solution, Mobilicity rocks. If you want a stable solution, stick to either Rogers, Bell or Telus. At the end of the day, I’m paying $40 a month compared to $240 with Rogers. I’ll stick with Mobilicity during their infancy and watch them only become better as they grow.

If you are looking to unlock your phone for the G2, I found the fastest service to be at Unlockitnow.com. Everywhere else it took over 24 hours to receive the unlock code, where as these guys did it in a few hours. Enjoy!

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

Well, I’ve been an iPhone user for the past 2 years and been fairly happy with it. I’ve been using the regular 3G model so I decided it was time to upgrade to something faster and better. Instead of going for the 3GS or the flawed iPhone 4, I decided to give the much anticipated Google Android phone a try. After aggressively reviewing all phones, I came to the conclusion that the XPERIA X10 was the the best piece of hardware on the market. Rogers offered me a decent deal at $150, so I took it.

After a month of solid usage, I have a lot to say about the Xperia X10. First off, the built-in GPS is amazing, the camera is rock solid and the best I’ve seen on any phone and the Google Market is coming along quite nicely. Although there are a few applications I miss from my iPhone, the App Store isn’t exactly worth the switch back to the the iPhone. Google has done a great job at building an incredible operating system and I imagine it will only get better on each update. Now here lies the problem…

Sony Ericsson has made the worst decision in its companies phone history. Sony needs to concentrate their focus on hardware and let Google do their thing with software. The XPERIA is still using the ancient Android 1.6 donut when Google is already set to launch version 2.2. Sony has continuously promised to update the OS, but they are too concerned with customizing the OS they way they want. In doing this, they are depriving their users and forcing me to jump back to the iPhone. Version 1.6 is outdated, it kills your battery and it doesn’t utilize the XPERIA hardware the way it should.

WAKE UP SONY, UPDATE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM! Word on the street says that Sony is planning to update to version 2.1 by late Q3 or early Q4. Once again, by the time the update is pushed, Google will be working on Android version 3.0. How depressing…

The only reason why I’m shorting at this point is because I’m looking for a 50-75 point correction, nothing more. There is a small chance that we can go up to 1220 on the S&P and face a 100 point correction, but I find that highly unlikely. My bet is at 1175-85.

As you read from my March 29th post I started shortin the QQQQ’s and SPY’s at 1175 up until 1225. I had my stop placed at 1230 and my last short sitting at 1220 as stated here. If you listened to my exact words, you would of been running to the bank on Thursday! I’ll be honest though, calling the bottom was near impossible. I’ve never witnessed a single day where we blew past the 50 and 200 day moving averages on the S&P. I exited my QQQQ/SPY shorts around 1144 on the S&P.

Here is a little snapshot of the huge success as recorded by Covester:

Chris P's Track Record on Covestor

I hope this helps everyone, happy trading!

The Smith Manoeuvre

The Smith Manoeuvre (or the Smith Move) is by far one of my favorite Canadian tax strategies. It’s a move that takes your mortgage and allows it to become tax deductible. Normal Canadian citizens are paying endless amounts of interest on their mortgage without any tax breaks, but the smith manoeuvre changes the game for us.

How it works: In the simplest way possible to explain, the Smith Manoeuvre is a way to turn your mortgage into an investment loan, which allows us to write off the interest on the investment loan. In Canadian tax law, the income tax act allows us to write off interest on income producing investments or rental income properties. So the objective here is to take your mortgage and convert it into an investment loan, which in turn gives you a nice tax credit.

Who Qualifies: Anyone who has savings, investments, or liquid cash. Without anytype of current investment or savings, you will not be able to pay off your mortgage and borrow against your investment. For the best case scenerio, it’s ideal to have investments or savings that total your full amount of the mortgage.

Advantages

• A legitimate tax strategy and/or loophole that allows you to save money on your interest
• You can pay off your non-deductible mortage quite fast
• You can build a solid low risk investment portfolio while you still have a mortgage

Disadvantages

• You need to have some sort of savings or investment in order to execute this manoeuvre
• The money you invest comes with risk

Executing the Smith Manoeuvre:

1. Liquidate your investment, savings or use your cash to pay off your mortgage.
2. Once your mortgage is paid off, you need to apply for a readvancable mortgage. For a readvancable mortgage, you’ll be required to put 25% down payment. This mortgage will be made up of 2 products, the HELOC (home equity line of credit) and your regular mortgage product. They key in combining both of these loan types is so that you can pay off your mortgage and allow your home equity line of credit to increase.
3. As your home equity line of credit increases, you can use this money to reinvest in dividend paying stocks or any type of investments. It’s important that you choose very safe investments because high risk investments would defeat the whole purpose of the Smith Manoeuvre. Also make sure you do not invest in RRSP’s or any other type of investments that don’t allow for your interest to be written off.
4. After you execute the Smith Manoeuvre, it’s very important that you make the proper claims during tax season. When filing your tax, make sure you deduct the total amount of interest you paid on your home equity line of credit. This full portion will be deducted from your income at your personal tax rate.
5. Take your your tax return and all the income you made from your dividend paying stocks and pay off your mortgage. Once you pay as much as your mortgage off you can go back to using your home equity line of credit to invest your money again. Keep repeating this every year until your mortgage is paid off in full.

Once you finish executing the Smith Manoeuvre you’ll feel great, nothing feels better then coming up with a legitimate tax strategy to help your finances. There is no need to use expensive accountants or outrageous tax lawyers. The Smith Manoeuvre is something anyone can do. I hope this helps, if you have any questions just make a comment and I’ll be happy to try and help.

The Smith Manoeuvre Video:

It’s always extremely difficult to fight a trend, and in this case selling gold is doing exactly that. Like I’ve said in previous posts, we are entering the largest bull in history but on the way we are going to see pullbacks and corrections. Instead of shorting gold at this point, I’ve only liquidated my positions and taken a short on the QQQQ and SPY.  Since we are in a bull market, my short targets are very tight, but if I were to loosen them up, I can definitely see gold getting back to the 1075-1080 range before it decides to climb back up.

Enjoy trading everyone!

Canadian Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card by American Express

After being a die hard Starwood Preferred Guest and using my no fee SPG credit card via MBNA, I’m sad to announce that it has come to an end. SPG has decided to move with AMEX, where the customer service will be great, but the rewards will be less. American Express has decided that it needs to charge customers a $120 annual fee for the same rewards we would of received at MBNA. Clearly this was a business decision on SPG’s end and not a move to help their customers.

Canadian credit cards are going to become more difficult to choose now, simply because it seems like every company is forcing annual fee’s and rediculous interest rates. The new interest rate will be 19.99% with AMEX. How they justify such extreme interest rates and annual fee’s is beyond me. But only we are to blame for this mess.

Here are some notes on the new American Express (AMEX) Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) credit card:

 The Pro

• $1 = 1 point, the same rate as MBNA’s SPG card
• Free weekend night after $40,000 in annual purchases
• Automatic upgrade to Gold Preferred Guest after $30,000 in annual purchases
• 10,000 welcome bonus points
• TRAVEL: Car rental & damange insurance, travel accident insurance, travel emergency insurance, baggage insurance, plus more.

The Con

• Removal of the 5000 point bonus for every $10,000 spent annualy, up to 15,000 bonus points
• $120 annual fee
• Mastercard is more widely used then American Express (MBNA was Mastercard)
• No more travel insurance, just regular insurance.
  

  Canadian MBNA Starwood credit card

All in all, you’d expect that that SPG would off their customers more for moving with American Express.  AMEX has higher merchant fee’s, annual fee’s, and they decided to offer much less then MBNA. There is no need to switch over with AMEX unless you like to be ripped off, they simply aren’t offering the same program as MBNA. It looks like us Canadian customers will have to look at a new credit card because AMEX SPG outright stinks.

You can visit any of their websites here:

Starwood Preferred Guest / American Express / MBNA Canada

Also, I’ve liquidated all my gold stocks and ETF’s until the correction takes place. The only commodity I’m still holding it physical gold.

It should be a great few weeks of trading for everyone following my lead. Enjoy!

Now for the market, I’ve sold off everything around the 1175 on the S&P. I really don’t see the market surpassing 1185 until we go back to 1100 first. In fact, I’ve taken a small short position on QQQQ (Nasdaq index). If the market continues to move up, I’ll continue to build my SMALL short on QQQQ while I wait for a correction. It’s important to mention that my overall status is still a bull. The only reason why I’m shorting at this point is because I’m looking for a 50-75 point correction, nothing more. There is a small chance that we can go up to 1220 on the S&P and face a 100 point correction, but I find that highly unlikely. My bet is at 1175-85.

Happy trading everyone!

Hey guys, I don’t see gold breaking past the $1150 barrier this week although I see it in the future cards. Look for the quick move up to $1135 and start your buying around $1115. For all the gold bugs out there, we should be at $1500 right now but you can thank the Euro zone for ruining that party. Until Greece figures out their debt problems, gold will not be off to the races. Happy trading!