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Business

“You Have To Take The Emotion Out Of Investing” – Are You Considering Buying In?

Published

5 years ago

12 minute read

Are you? You may not be the only one. We have seen stock markets like the Toronto Stock Exchange take major hits over the past two months due to the effects of Covid-19 taking its toll on almost every industry. With some recent rises in markets continuing to build investor confidence, we are still left in the unknown for why this is happening. Living through a historically unprecedented time uncovers a long list of questions and concerns for our livelihood as individuals, quality of life for the future, and how best to navigate through this time. I’m sure during the Irish potato famine in 1845-1849, there were many people asking – what’s going on with all the potatoes? 

In a survey undertaken by the group “500 Startups” based in Silicon Valley, surveyed a group of investors to report on how they have been affected by the pandemic. The investor group consisted of venture capitalists, angel investors, corporate venture investors, and family office investors. The report showed 83% having their investment activity and plans be affected by Covid-19. As seen in the chart below, 62.6% of the group feel that startups and early-stage investors will be feeling the effects of the pandemic for 1-2 years. Their advice to startups during this time is to simply decrease costs and to increase their runway for how long they can stay in business. 

Data taken from 500 Startups report on The Impact of COVID-19 on the Early-Stage Investment Climate

 

We spoke with Kevin Skinner, an investment advisor for Servus Wealth Strategies, who gave us some insight and knowledge pertaining to open concerns for novice investors who may be seeking to enter the market or simply are in the dark for what to with their holdings. Kevin has been working in the financial services industry for over a decade and is a top investment advisor in their St. Abert branch. 

Considering what we have seen so far in stock markets, Is it a good time for new long term investors to buy now or continue to wait?

Striving away from the idea that fortune-tellers exist within trading, which is not true, a good education on markets is always a good pre-market investment of your own time. In regards to those looking to be a long term investor, he mentions:

“If you’re a long term investor the adage is that it’s always the best time…so question number one has to be, can you afford to invest the money right now…the second question is, what else can you do with this money. If you have $10,000 in the bank and $10,000 in credit card debt, always better to pay off the debt than you are investing that money.”

We want our money working for us right? Having a solid grasp of how your money is working for you may allow you to make a better-educated investment without adding any financial risk. The idea that there are smoke signals in the market to tell you it is the right time to invest, he mentions:

“If it was that easy, I would be sitting on my private island somewhere enjoying the world…It really is about investing correctly and investing to your plan. If your plan is to have the money for the long term, You need to have an understanding of your risks and your comfort.”

What if I have money to invest right now, should I wait for the bottom line? 

Kevin advised the dollar cost average tool to take the emotion out of investing. With so much volatility in the market, we revisit the concept that fortune-tellers exist to tell other investors when to buy; there is no way to fully identify the risks. To ensure you’re getting good value for your money, Kevin offers an example of the dollar cost average approach:

“Take your pool of money, call it $12,000. You invest $1,000 a month in a particular fund. You catch the market as it wobbles, so you don’t necessarily buy it all at the bottom, you’re definitely not buying it all at the top. You’re averaging your cost date and to get a good value for what you’re buying.”

Do you have an opinion on panic selling at a loss? 

Straight out of the gate, Kevin is a firm believer that anything that involves the word “panic” is never a good thing. Investopedia’s definition of panic selling refers to the sudden, wide-scale selling of a security or securities by a large number of investors, causing a sharp decline in price. We have seen this as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Panic selling can be directly related to having an emotional connection to your investment, but to ensure the doom and gloom doesn’t get the better of you, having an objective view allows you to stay logical and stick to your plan. Kevin mentions: 

“you have to do whatever you can to pull that emotion back out. Panic selling immediately is focused on the emotional side of it. You have to remove the emotion from investing.”

Not as easy as it sounds right? We are going through an emotionally ramped up time during this pandemic, not to mention dealing with all the other unknown realities of how our economy will bounce back or when the non-essential business will be reopened. Kevin recommends choosing places to move your investments to take the panic out. 

“You don’t call a realtor when your house is on fire. That’s where we’re at in the market right now, we know the house is on fire. We don’t know how long it’s going to last, how bad it’s going to be, or what it’s going to look like when it’s put out.”

 

Can you offer any comment on the fear of more lows, or what are the key indicators that we should be aware of?

We have seen stocks rise over the past week due to economic stimulus measures and the actions being taken to gradually reopen global economies. Experienced investors are forward-thinking individuals, they take into consideration the risk-reward for having objective optimism in certain industries. Kevin encourages to take the view that the rises we have seen are temporary for now, he mentions:

“Know that there’s another drop coming. Know that we don’t know how bad it’s going to be. And we don’t know how long the recovery is going to take. which is why we’re saying it’s going to be 2021 at least before the flooding of the market recovers”

We are expecting a long and slow road to recovery, but finding the bottom line can be almost impossible. Ask yourself, what happens to market optimism if a vaccine is made available tomorrow? Does that mean the market will become flooded with investors? It is impossible to know; by choosing a trusted investment advisor they can assist with taking the emotion out of your investments, and you can lean on their knowledge of markets to offer that objective optimism. For individual investors, it is useful to be aware of the activity in that sector to aid in growing your confidence, or the counter, it may give you key information to avoid a bad buy right now.

How have you been navigating through this time?

Kevin is one of many continuing to work from home during this period of self-isolation. With any new environment carries challenges. He is thankful for Servus Credit Union for the support he has received and the efforts put forward by the whole team. He has been spending some time in the welcomed sunshine playing sports with his 12-year-old son in his driveway.

What has Servus Credit Union been proactively doing to support its customers right now? 

Servus Credit Union released their response to COVID-19, issuing kind words to their members that they are here for them during this time. Their CEO, Garth Warner also released a personal letter to all of their members speaking on behalf of the team doing everything they can do to support their members. Kevin mentions:

“Our members are truly members, they’re all owners. Everyone who deals with the credit union holds a piece of the credit union. Right now we’re trying to keep our whole business, our owners, and our members afloat…so whatever we do, is what’s best for us as an organization which means it’s also what’s best for our members”

What are you personally looking forward to after this period of self-isolation?

“I coach sports. Of course every kid’s sport is canceled right now. We lost the end of our sports seasons for the winter, we’re going to miss the beginning of our sports season for the spring. And that’s what I miss most is getting outside with the kids and just having fun.”

If you would like to learn more about Servus Credit Union, Servus Wealth Strategies or Kevin Skinner, visit their website or social links below.

Facebook       Twitter       LinkedIn       Instagram       YouTube

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Banks

Bank of Canada Cuts Rates to 2.25%, Warns of Structural Economic Damage

Published on October 29, 2025

By

The Opposition with Dan Knight

Dan Knight's avatar Dan Knight

Governor Tiff Macklem concedes the downturn runs deeper than a business cycle, citing trade wars, weak investment, and fading population growth as permanent drags on Canada’s economy.

In an extraordinary press conference on October 29th, 2025, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem stood before reporters in Ottawa and calmly described what most Canadians have already been feeling for months: the economy is unraveling. But don’t expect him to say it in plain language. The central bank’s message was buried beneath bureaucratic doublespeak, carefully manicured forecasts, and bilingual spin. Strip that all away, and here’s what’s really going on: the Canadian economy has been gutted by a combination of political mismanagement, trade dependence, and a collapsing growth model based on mass immigration. The central bank knows it. The data proves it. And yet no one dares to say the quiet part out loud.

Start with the headline: the Bank of Canada cut interest rates by 25 basis points, bringing the policy rate down to 2.25%, its second consecutive cut and part of a 100 basis point easing campaign this year. That alone should tell you something is wrong. You don’t slash rates in a healthy economy. You do it when there’s pain. And there is. Canada’s GDP contracted by 1.6% in the second quarter of 2025. Exports are collapsing, investment is weak, and the unemployment rate is stuck at 7.1%, the highest non-pandemic level since 2016.

Macklem admitted it: “This is more than a cyclical downturn. It’s a structural adjustment. The U.S. trade conflict has diminished Canada’s economic prospects. The structural damage caused by tariffs is reducing the productive capacity of the economy.” That’s not just spin—that’s an admission of failure. A major trading nation like Canada has built its economic engine around exports, and now, thanks to years of reckless dependence on U.S. markets and zero effort to diversify, it’s all coming apart.

And don’t miss the implications of that phrase “structural adjustment.” It means the damage is permanent. Not temporary. Not fixable with a couple of rate cuts. Permanent. In fact, the Bank’s own Monetary Policy Report says that by the end of 2026, GDP will be 1.5% lower than it was forecast back in January. Half of that hit comes from a loss in potential output. The other half is just plain weak demand. And the reason that demand is weak? Because the federal government is finally dialing back the immigration faucet it’s been using for years to artificially inflate GDP growth.

The Bank doesn’t call it “propping up” GDP. But the facts are unavoidable. In its MPR, the Bank explicitly ties the coming consumption slowdown to a sharp drop in population growth: “Population growth is a key factor behind this expected slowdown, driven by government policies designed to reduce the inflow of newcomers. Population growth is assumed to slow to average 0.5% over 2026 and 2027.” That’s down from 3.3% just a year ago. So what was driving GDP all this time? People. Not productivity. Not innovation. Not exports. People.

And now that the government has finally acknowledged the political backlash of dumping half a million new residents a year into an overstretched housing market, the so-called “growth” is vanishing. It wasn’t real. It was demographic window dressing. Macklem admitted as much during the press conference when he said: “If you’ve got fewer new consumers in the economy, you’re going to get less consumption growth.” That’s about as close as a central banker gets to saying: we were faking it.

And yet despite all of this, the Bank still clings to its bureaucratic playbook. When asked whether Canada is heading into a recession, Macklem hedged: “Our outlook has growth resuming… but we expect that growth to be very modest… We could get two negative quarters. That’s not our forecast, but we can’t rule it out.” Translation: It’s already here, but we’re not going to admit it until StatsCan confirms it six months late.

Worse still, when reporters pressed him on what could lift the economy out of the ditch, he passed the buck. “Monetary policy can’t undo the damage caused by tariffs. It can’t target the hard-hit sectors. It can’t find new markets for companies. It can’t reconfigure supply chains.” So what can it do? “Mitigate spillovers,” Macklem says. That’s central banker code for “stand back and pray.”

So where’s the recovery supposed to come from? The Bank pins its hopes on a moderate rebound in exports, a bit of resilience in household consumption, and “ongoing government spending.” There it is. More public sector lifelines. More debt. More Ottawa Band-Aids.

And looming behind all of this is the elephant in the room: U.S. trade policy. The Bank explicitly warns that the situation could worsen depending on the outcome of next year’s U.S. election. The MPR highlights that tariffs are already cutting into Canadian income, raising business costs, and eliminating entire trade-dependent sectors. Governor Macklem put it plainly: “Unless something else changes, our incomes will be lower than they otherwise would have been.”

Canadians should be furious. For years, we were told everything was fine. That our economy was “resilient.” That inflation was “transitory.” That population growth would solve all our problems. Now we’re being told the economy is structurally impaired, trade-dependent to a fault, and stuck with weak per-capita growth, high unemployment, and sticky core inflation between 2.5–3%. And the people responsible for this mess? They’ve either resigned (Trudeau), failed upward (Carney), or still refuse to admit they spent a decade selling us a fantasy.

This isn’t just bad economics. It’s political malpractice.

Canada isn’t failing because of interest rates or some mysterious global volatility. It’s failing because of deliberate choices—trade dependence, mass immigration without infrastructure, and a refusal to confront reality. The central bank sees the iceberg. They’re easing the throttle. But the ship has already taken on water. And no one at the helm seems willing to turn the wheel.

So here’s the truth: The Bank of Canada just rang the alarm bell. Quietly. Cautiously. But clearly. The illusion is over. The fake growth era is ending. And the reckoning has begun.

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Business

Ford’s Liquor War Trades Economic Freedom For Political Theatre

Published on October 29, 2025

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Conrad Eder

Consumer choice, not government coercion, should shape the market. Doug Ford’s alcohol crackdown trades symbolic outrage for sound policy and Ontarians will pay the price

Ontario politicians have developed an insatiable appetite for prohibition. Having already imposed a sweeping ban on all American alcohol, Premier Doug Ford has now threatened to remove Crown Royal, Smirnoff and potentially other brands from LCBO shelves. Such authoritarian impulses reflect a disturbing shift in our political culture—one that undermines economic prosperity and individual liberty.

After Diageo, the multinational behind brands like Crown Royal and Smirnoff, announced in August that it would close its Amherstburg, Ont., bottling facility, affecting 200 workers, the political response was swift. NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky urged the government to retaliate by pulling Crown Royal from LCBO shelves. Days later, Ford dramatically dumped a bottle of the whisky during a press conference, signalling he might follow through.

Now, the premier has escalated the threat, vowing to remove Smirnoff and potentially other Diageo products.

These gestures may make headlines, but they come at a cost. They undermine business confidence, discourage investment, and send the wrong message to employers. More fundamentally, they reflect a poor understanding of how free societies settle disputes and make decisions.

To understand what’s at stake, it helps to consider the two basic mechanisms available to democratic societies: the marketplace and the ballot box. At the ballot box, citizens vote once, and majority rule determines a single outcome. The marketplace, by contrast, allows people to vote continuously with their dollars. Individuals make countless choices reflecting their own values and priorities. You get what you choose—without overriding anyone else’s preference.

There’s a role for government in correcting market failures, where there’s fraud, monopoly power or public risk. But banning legal products simply because of political displeasure with a company’s decision is not market correction. It’s coercion.

Diageo’s decision to close a facility may be unfortunate, but it doesn’t involve deception, unfair dominance, or harm to the public. Bans aren’t rooted in sound principle; they’re political, plain and simple.

Some argue the government is justified in acting to protect Ontario jobs. But that line of thinking is short-sighted. If job protection alone warranted banning products, we’d resist every innovation or trade deal that disrupted the status quo. Sustainable job growth depends on encouraging investment and innovation, not shielding every position from change.

The appropriate response to plant closures is policy reform, not retaliation. Ontario should focus on creating an environment where businesses want to invest and grow. That means fostering a stable, competitive business climate with clear rules, reasonable taxes, and efficient regulation. Threatening companies with bans only creates uncertainty and drives investment elsewhere.

With Ontarians spending $740 million annually on Diageo products, removing them from store shelves would impose real economic costs. Consumers would face fewer choices, weaker competition, and higher prices. Restaurants and retailers would be forced to adjust. The LCBO, Ontario’s government-run liquor retailer, would lose sales.

This isn’t hypothetical. The province’s ban on American alcohol is already projected to block nearly $1 billion in annual sales, while doing nothing to benefit Ontario consumers. The LCBO is serving political interests, not the public.

Supporters of such bans often reveal their lack of confidence in public opinion. Rather than persuade others to boycott a product voluntarily, they demand that government enforce a blanket restriction.

There’s a better way. Consumer-led boycotts offer accountability without coercion. They allow individuals to act on their beliefs without forcing others to comply. And they tend to be more effective, as companies respond faster to falling sales than to political theatrics.

But the issue at hand goes beyond liquor. It’s about whether elected officials should impose a single set of preferences on everyone, or whether citizens are trusted to decide for themselves.

Each new ban makes the next one easier to justify. Over time, these interventions accumulate and normalize government interference in private choice. Unlike consumer preferences, which can shift quickly and reverse, government prohibitions often persist. The LCBO’s century-old structure is evidence of how long some policies endure, even when they no longer serve the public interest.

This isn’t a call to eliminate government’s role. But it is a call for principled governance, the kind that distinguishes between legitimate oversight and overreach rooted in symbolism or political frustration.

Ontario’s government would do better to focus on long-term prosperity. That means building an economy where investors feel welcome, businesses can grow, and consumers are free to choose.

Ontarians are perfectly capable of making their own choices about which products to buy and which companies to support. They don’t need politicians like  Ford making those decisions for them.

Conrad Eder is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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