Credit card myths

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description:   Debt on your credit cards can be a common way to sink your financial plan. But university students are often targeted by those marketing credit cards. If you want to use this form of credit – and its pretty hard to avoid it in our time – you should know some common myths about… Read more »

Death Spiral

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis, Student life.

Description:  The Globe and Mail is saying New Brunswick is in a ‘death spiral’ financially. The problem is that the tiny province is in the last stages of an election campaign and none of the political leaders really seems to be seriously engaging the issue. In the past ten years, New Brunswick has basically doubled… Read more »

Texture for Apple

Posted by & filed under Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: Apple is taking steps to advance its role in media content through its purchase of Texture. Texture, originally known as Next Issue, allows subscribers to access content from over 200 magazines for a subscription fee of $9.99 per month. We don’t seem to know at this point what amount Apple paid for this media entity,… Read more »

Maybe it Will Make Money

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: After years of less than spectacular results, and with most of its previous profits coming from its web services arm, Amazon seems to have busted through the retail profits barrier. Its fourth quarter profit was close to $2 billion, with a big helping hand from the latest US tax cut. Alexa seems to be… Read more »

Look up! Rates are rising

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: After years of cuts and restraint on interest rates, on Wednesday the Bank of Canada raised interest rates for the second time in three months. The Bank’s move sparked a rally in the loonie, with the Canadian dollar rising to its highest level in two years versus the United States dollar. The Bank appears… Read more »

Netflix over one target, under another

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: Netflix‘s earnings per share exceeded the analysts’ estimates in its recent report on the first quarter. Conversely, the number of new subscribers was below what analysts had predicted. Overall, Netflix seems profitable with net income up to $178 million, an increase of about $150 million. The stock has been doing quite nicely, with the… Read more »

No social media allowed

Posted by & filed under Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: Unlike in the United States, Canadian securities regulators have blocked Canadian publicly traded companies from announcing important information first on social media. Canadian companies are required to report information first via the traditional press release. One concern regulators have is that an item could be posted to social media, and then taken down shortly… Read more »

Will Apple face America First pressure?

Posted by & filed under International Business Operations, Public Finance, Taxation.

Description: Donald Trump has put pressure on US automakers to keep manufacturing jobs in America. But what about Apple? The wealthy computer maker doesn’t actually make its devices in the United States. Globe and Mail columnist Eric Reguly points out that many of Apple’s products owe a debt to government funded technological advances, so perhaps… Read more »

More tolls for Toronto

Posted by & filed under Public Finance.

Description: In a bid to fight traffic congestion and to raise additional funds, Toronto mayor John Tory announced this past week that major arteries such as the Don Valley Parkway are now candidates for a $2 per vehicle toll. Toll revenues will be plugged into funding for infrastructure and public transit. One aim of the… Read more »