Marnie is a highly successful and disciplined investor with a diversified portfolio of twenty stocks she has carefully chosen over many years. When considering exiting one of her positions and acquiring a new one, her approach is to make a list of companies that interest her and carefully analyze them based on standard metrics like market capitalization, dividend yield, profit margin, five-year growth rate, and many other factors and then chose one or two of the most promising for more detailed study.

This mid-career physician moved from Vancouver to a smaller city in BC after residency arguing that only someone of his father’s generation could sensibly afford real estate in Vanouver back in the seventies. His generation were better off in a much smaller place like Vernon in the 90s and he predicted that his children might be advised to pick a different province if they hoped to one day be homeowners.  He was now close to paying off his mortgage and wanted to purchase more real estate as many believe it can be an easy road to financial success. I do not share this opinion as I did not experience constantly rising real estate values in small town eastern Canada. Even when living in the west, I always considered my home to be a place to live and raise a family and not as an investment. Finally, real estate is not highly liquid and can be sometimes very difficult to sell and thus frustrating and emotionally draining if you are in a hurry for some reason.

Jeff has been in practice for fifteen years and is generally considered the best local doctor in his field. He has entrusted all his investments to a wealth management team who have been very clear that he is not close to achieving financial independence despite solid returns on his portfolio. He contacted me to ask about taking a more aggressive approach including hedge funds, options, and shorting selected businesses and market sectors to “juice his returns”.