Category: Canada

Enterra Energy Trust – Rising for no reason at all

Enterra Energy is a typical small-scale energy trust that has miscellaneous properties in Alberta and Oklahoma. They are not too remarkable other than the fact that they have been very diligent at reducing their balance sheet leverage over the past couple years – their unitholders received their last distribution in August 2007.

Today they announced that they will be converting to a corporation and changing their name. One would think this is typical considering that income trusts that do not give distributions to should change to corporations before the end of 2012 deadline. Income trusts that give out distributions in 2010 still have their tax shield for one more year – although the majority of them after 2010 should convert to corporations in either 2011 or 2012.

For whatever reason, the market decided that the announcement to convert to a corporation from a trust was worth a 25% mark-up in their unit price, as of the moment of this writing.

There is fundamentally no reason for this announcement to cause such a price spike. Either something else is going on, or the market is behaving very, very irrationally. Spikes like this make the market feel very bubbly.

Disclosure – I do own debentures in Enterra Energy Trust (the ones maturing in December 2011). They have been inching up closer to par over the past month and hopefully will continuing bubbling up above par, where I will proceed to dump them. If not, I keep collecting 8% coupons, which is a good reward to wait for a good price.

Bank of Canada on Canada’s real estate bubble

The Bank of Canada is very correct in saying they won’t raise rates because of the obvious real estate bubble.

The interest rate is a very crude tool which affects many more facets of the economy than just the real estate market.

Right now you can cool down the real estate market by changing the minimum leverage ratios required to purchase – the subsequent decrease in available credit will accomplish this.

Right now the law permits you to take out a mortgage with a 35-year amortization and a 5% down payment. The primary concern is the down payment fraction, and not the amortization rate (although a longer amortization will allow for a larger purchase due to a decreased payment to principal). Essentially you can buy a house on 19:1 “margin”. The most leverage you are legally allowed to use with equities is 30% down.

A simple mathematical example will demonstrate why a 5% down payment requirement is ridiculously low.

With a 5% down payment, you can buy a $400,000 house with a $20,000 down payment, so you would be borrowing $380,000. In the event you couldn’t actually afford the down payment, banks have developed convenient “cash back” mortgages that give you cash up front, but in exchange for a higher rate of interest throughout the mortgage. An example is TD’s “5% cash back mortgage“, where instead of paying a posted 4.24% 5-year regular mortgage rate, you can pay 5.49% for the cash-back option.

Let’s say you purchase this place, and then your house appreciates 5% – so you have $40,000 equity in a $420,000 home. In theory, you can then get a second mortgage on the home for $20,000, cough up another $1,000 from your VISA or Mastercard (since 5% of $420,000 is $21,000) and then buy another $400,000 home with a $380,000 mortgage. If your two homes appreciate another 5%, then you can afford two more $400,000 homes, etc.

One can see how a single person can leverage a lot of money with a 5% down payment requirement. It becomes ridiculously easy in a rising real estate market. Of course, when the real estate market goes down, your ability to borrow money stops, and you then have to face the music when it comes to paying the mortgages (or just calling it a day and default).

With a 10% down payment, it becomes a little more difficult to perform this operation – your fictional $400,000 home requires a $40,000 down payment. Your home will have to appreciate just over 10% in order to be theoretically eligible for a second mortgage that would give a a sufficient down payment to buy another equal-priced place.

The legal minimum down payment before a mortgage should be granted is set to a number higher than what it is currently. Ideally it should be linked to the Canadian government 5-year bond – a lower interest rate should require a higher minimum down payment, while a higher interest rate should require a lower minimum down payment. A more simplistic solution (and much easier to market) is just to increase it to a particular rate. The Canadian government has hinted it may increase.

While in theory people should be left alone to select their preferred debt leverage ratio, it was shown in the USA that the actions of a lot of fiscally irresponsible people (and their banks) caused genuine impact to those that could actually manage their affairs properly – savers in the current environment are basically being punished by the actions of the squanders. As such, it is an easy decision to raise the minimum down payment percentage required to obtain a mortgage.

As a matter of personal finance, people that don’t have at least 20% squirreled up for a down payment should likely not be purchasing a place. This is the minimum amount required to avoid paying any CMHC home mortgage insurance premiums, which is an absolutely unnecessary expense since you are not receiving any benefit out of the insurance (other than the ability to get cheap credit in the first place) – the bank is getting the benefit, while the public is securing it with federal taxpayers’ money.

ING Direct trying to trap capital in TFSA accounts

I noticed at the start of the year that ING Direct was offering a 3% 90-day GIC for RRSP accounts (no transfers required) and also 3% for a TFSA account, but with the rate subject to change at any time.

Anybody with an RRSP in ING Direct would do well to lock in the 90-day rate as soon as they can; even though they stated they will offer it until March 1st, they could revoke it. The difference between a 3% rate and a 1.25% rate (which is more representative of the current market rate for a 1-year GIC) is $43.15 on a $10,000 investment. It is not huge money, but it is more money nonetheless.

The 3% TFSA offer is quite a lure, but it is designed to trap as much money before they reset the rate back to a lower rate. The trick with the TFSA is that once customers have deposited their money into the TFSA, it is a lot of unnecessary paperwork to get their money out of the TFSA account once the rate resets to something lower. If customers decide to withdrawal the TFSA once the rate goes lower, then they lose the contribution room into their TFSA until January 1, 2011.

For those people that want to keep their money in a risk-free instrument (e.g. a GIC), use the ING Direct TFSA at your own peril. As a matter of financial planning, the TFSA should not be used as a risk-free account anyhow, but some people will want to use it to park idle cash.

ING Direct used to be the undisupted best place to save money, but over the past few years they have become just “normal”. They are still excellent with respect to having a no-fee operation and this works to their benefit – if money is easy to get out of them, then I feel much safer keeping money with them. For matters such as RRSP and TFSA transfers, however, there is a real bureaucratic cost associated with these and it is not worth it to capture an extra 0.5% elsewhere for the dollar amounts in question that people typically deal with.

If ING Direct wanted to raise a lot of longer duration capital, they’d do fairly well if they offered a 5% 5-year GIC.

Chasing yield is easy until the party ends

I have successfully liquidated my debentures in Harvest Energy (series D and E) for 101.5 and 102.0, respectively. Since they are trading above the 101 that will have to be offered after the takeover, it is unlikely that investors will tender the debt. I am happy to be rid of the bonds so my capital can find some more productive areas. My opportunity cost of this transaction is giving up about a 6% yield, but there are equivalent risk instruments that the money can be parked in the interim.

I have another issue (Bellatrix Exploration, formerly True Energy Trust) that has seen its equity rise about 400% over the past four months and its bonds have correspondingly traded near par. It is very close to my liquidation point and there will be a high probability it will be sold very soon.

As such, my portfolio is starting to look cash rich. While cash is good, it is also earning a return that is less than flattering (mainly zero) and while I can shift the funds into a short term savings account for 1.2% (or 2% if I shopped around) I am always looking for a better place to put my money – something that will give a yield.

In my tax sheltered accounts, I am looking for investments that will generate income. Outside the tax sheltered accounts, I am looking for investments that can generate capital gains (taxed at half the rate) or eligible dividends (taxed significantly less depending on what income bracket you are in).

Most of the income trusts have been bidded up to yields that are not representative of the risks embedded within the company – for example, a trust that is always on my watchlist (but I never get around to purchasing) is A&W – currently yielding about 8.01%. This is not adequate compensation for a company that is distributing more cash than its distributable cash allotment. It is possible that A&W could trade higher (and yield lower) but this is essentially the equivalent of gambling and could just as easily go to 8.5% ($14.82/unit) as it could to 7.5% ($16.80/unit). I do not want to get into coin flipping competitions with the market.

Since my hurdle rate is above 8%, I am forced to lower my standards if I am to seek a home for my cash. This means either accepting higher risk, or accepting a lower rate of return.

Right now if I accepted a lower rate of return, I estimate I could generate about 10% a year with debentures, but this is still a relatively low rate of return in consideration of the risk taken.

As such, I must broaden my search to more obscure securities and companies. This will also require some research and time. It will also require appropriate market conditions when people are less confident.

Fortunately, time is on my side – while the cash is sitting there, earning nearly nothing, it will at least be there when I need it. The temptation to quickly deploy cash is one of the most destructive psychological behaviours one has while investing.

An inflation-protected investment

This does not scale up beyond a couple hundred dollars, but if you are planning on sending a large quantity of first-class letters across Canada, investing in some stamps is not a bad method. Currently stamps are 54 cents and are marked as “permanent” which means that the face value of the stamp will increase as prices increase. Stamp prices will increase to 56 cents in 2010 and 58 cents in 2011.

Implicit in this price increase is a 3.7% protection against price increases in the future. Since interest rates are currently well below this figure, there is a minor amount of inflation-proofing available to buy stamps now for the next few years.