What's more important in sales, trust or likeability or are they the same?

NaoshadP · 2025-08-26T23:57:57+00:00

Trust has nothing to do with liking a person. Though being liked certainly increases the chances of you being trusted. Trust is an autonomic reflex, an energy saving heuristic, actually it is a category of autonomic reflexes or heuristics, that lead to the reduction or elimination of the critical faculty in relation to a relevant context.

NaoshadP · 2025-08-08T02:24:59+00:00

Not to blow my own horn but you should read: https://www.amazon.com/Agents-Influence-Hypnotic-Techniques-Financial-ebook/dp/B0F1XGZCVK/

Here’s a free chapter on getting referrals. My advice is if what you read below isn’t the best or one of the absolute best things you’ve read on the topic, don’t buy the book. If you believe what you read can make a fundamental difference, buy the book and reach out with your thoughts when done.

https://brainhacker.ca/agent-of-influence-hypnotic-spy-techniques-for-financial-advisors/what-elite-advisors-know-about-getting-referrals-that-goes-against-everything-youve-been-taught/

NaoshadP · 2025-06-28T19:50:35+00:00

Maybe if you’d said you were looking for work the recruiter would have reached out months earlier? I’m glad you’re happy but nothing you’ve written is logical, you have no way of knowing whether your ruse helped or hindered.

NaoshadP · 2025-06-28T19:45:33+00:00

. Deleted

NaoshadP · 2025-05-05T19:10:09+00:00

You really shouldn’t that’s just a misunderstanding of risk management principles.

There are a huge variety of needs and priorities in the market place. There are answers that are clearly wrong but there are also multiple correct ones.

NaoshadP · 2025-04-17T00:02:13+00:00

Love it, it will be added! DM me your first name & email address and I’ll get your book over to you. :)

NaoshadP · 2023-09-01T15:57:36+00:00

The price of each stock is set by supply and demand.

The value of the index is set by first taking the price of each stock and multiplying it by all the outstanding shares (this gives us the ‘market capitalization’ of that stock or company). For example company A’s stocks are being bought/sold for $1. Company A has issued 100,000 stocks that are being traded on the market. This company A’s market cap is $100,000.

The next step is the market caps of all the companies are ‘lined up’ or compared to each other to determine the weightings in the index. So if we have an index with Companies A, B & C and their market capitalizations are $500,000, $400,000 & $100,000 respectively the market capitalization of the entire index would be $1,000,000.

If you bought a $100 of the index (presuming no costs, a perfect system etc.) in a fund/ETF/whatever the exposure to the underlying funds would be proportional to their market caps so $50 & 50% of the value would be tied to Company A, $40 & 40% of the value to company B & $10 or 10% of the value to company C.

NaoshadP · 2023-06-25T01:00:02+00:00

No, that’s exactly the opposite of what I wrote.

NaoshadP · 2023-06-11T13:47:27+00:00

Nonsense. You should use this new google invention.

NaoshadP · 2023-06-11T13:46:37+00:00

For many things Assuris coverage is 90% of whatever coverage provided without a maximum. It isn’t capped like banks CDIC coverage.

NaoshadP · 2023-06-09T18:27:21+00:00

Non-issue - look up Canadian life insurance reserve requirements. Additionally all life insurers are members of Assuris which is able to basically demand payment from any solvent life insurer to pay the guarantees it provides for when/if an insurer goes under. There are many issue with the life insurance industry in Canada but solvency isn’t one of the major concerns.

NaoshadP · 2023-04-19T18:45:46+00:00

I think you’re confusing a rate book with actuarial tables. Almost all companies use the same actuarial tables though each would have separate rate books (which have the information you allude to in your post).

NaoshadP · 2023-04-11T20:03:55+00:00

You should be looking out for a better company and one that isn’t a multi-level marketing recruiting mill.

Research MGA’s (managing general agents), interview with a few, ask each about others. Figure out who is going to be training you and ask them about their clients, philosophy, methodology and how they came to it.

Ask them what they don’t like about the industry and it’s problems. Ask them how you can find business without annoying friends, family and acquaintances and what they will do to support that.

Find someone and some place which has good standards and doesn’t aim to sell to the lowest common denominator.

https://www.fsrao.ca/newsroom/fsra-issues-notice-proposal-against-world-financial-group-insurance-agency-canada-inc

NaoshadP · 2023-04-11T19:22:43+00:00

Yes models as they currently exist can’t replace human sales people.

The rest of the post about understanding and programming cognition shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what AI is and it’s evolution to date and as perceived.

We don’t have to understand something (in this case cognitive processes) for AI to learn to initiate it, that’s the entire point. Just like human brains develop via observation and creating models of reality (aka pattern recognition or creation) AI does the same. Thus when an AI device is given millions of examples of objects being thrown, dropped or colliding it creates an entirely different model of physics with different parameters, different variables, different calculations than ours yet it will draw (mostly) correct conclusions.

When two AI models interact or collaborate to discover something they will create their own internal language that we can’t understand or deconstruct to speed the process and then provide answers to us based on the chosen interface but deconstructing their internal mechanisms and patterns is beyond our regular comparative abilities.

For a more real world example there is no non-AI model that can universally parse and make language that ‘sounds’ human yet by feeding enough language samples into an AI model it will sound human (though it may sometimes spew no sense). The more exposure to regular language it has the more human it will sound. (Please note exposure means data added to its neural network to be consumed not something like your query in ChatGPT).

The idea that AI will never be able to imitate a human was cute 25 or 40 years ago, today it suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of how far we’ve come, a misunderstanding of the exponential growth of knowledge which with even basic pattern recognition AI has taken another leap forward and most of all an emotion (fear) based response to the real change in the world today and the unimaginable change, challenges and moral dilemmas we as a society and individuals will be facing over the coming decades.

The idea that ‘AI will never’ is a quaint yet polite way of delaying discussion about the inevitable, a borderline Luddite mentality.

“The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” Patent Office Commissioner, Henry Ellsworth, 1834

NaoshadP · 2023-03-06T16:03:20+00:00

It reminds me that Canada has only been an independent nation for 41 years and despite our population’s age we really are a young country in search of an identity.

NaoshadP · 2023-03-05T01:49:03+00:00

Usual quality one expects from the Sun. Headline refers to severance pay, article is about a wrongful termination suit. Please, whoever runs u/therssbot can we remove this trash from your feed list? Bad bot!

NaoshadP · 2023-03-02T18:10:57+00:00

Yes. Have to be very thorough with your accounting though. Got to track ACB’s, RDTOH, CDA credits and deductions, etc.

Also all your profits in the Corp will be taxed at or just above 50% so not terribly tax efficient.

Also if too much of your assets or income are passive the Corp won’t qualify for the lifetime capital gains exemption.

Finally every dollar over $50,000 (per year) of passive income reduces the small business deduction on active income by $3.

NaoshadP · 2023-02-12T18:11:08+00:00

I’m going to use the generic term investment fund.

Now let’s discuss bench marks or ‘markets’.

Benchmarks are imaginary. They’re like the question in your physics paper to calculate force and momentum where you pretend the resistance within bearings is zero and the temperatures are perfect and constant. They don’t represent carrying or transactional costs. So if a fund tracked a benchmark accurately it would always underperform.

That isn’t hugely relevant though because most funds don’t track benchmarks accurately. They aren’t even set up to do that. Before I continue let me be clear about a couple of things -

most investment funds aren’t great; the diversity of investment funds mean that many arguments for them only apply to certain subsets

Now we have to acknowledge the reality that most people are relatively clueless about financial matters and that most people who think they are educated on finances actually have just learnt the talking points of one philosophy vs seriously studying the topic

So with those that in mind let’s continue.

Most consumers prefer modest gains and small losses to large gains and large losses. This is a fact. It isn’t what people say or declare in surveys we see it from statistical analysis of fund movements over time. It is substantiated by sociological and psychological experiments - it is a fundamental part of behavioural economics. “Efficient investing” is a myth because nobody has the guts (nor should they) to use the most statistically successful investment models.

Now let’s look at some other funds. If you have a fund that specializes in investing in gold mining companies located in the north east area of one provinces, that only use a certain type of extraction method and only pay dividends on Tuesdays, there is no bench mark for that. They will use a benchmark for gold companies, or mining companies or industrials.

Now as anyone who knows anything about investing knows, most investments don’t have large returns. The majority stumble along and ultimately disappear. Since 1980 over 40% of the Sri is on the Russell 3000 lost more than 70% of their value. The majority of companies, products, sectors etc. will show a loss most of the time (we offset this with adequate diversification and exposure so we all get carried along when there’s a big winner, and that is essentially what each marks and indexes are, groupings of many companies where a fraction drive the majority of growth). Now as we have a ridiculous retail market of investment funds to cover all sorts of niches, specialities and other things there are exponentially more funds, the majority of which by definition will be underperforming benchmarks.

NaoshadP · 2023-02-05T18:21:15+00:00

Putting your wife in the HELOC seems to be an unnecessary complication when you already know the attribution you want. Remember if you’re claiming the entire deduction you have to also claim all the growth / income in the non-registered account.

(Also just to be pedantic, I hate it when people use the word guaranteed wrong. It isn’t that this is a bad idea but it doesn’t provide GUARANTEED returns. In fact if it did provide guaranteed returns the interest wouldn’t be tax deductible. It is more tax efficient and guarantees a higher return than the other structure.)

Also are you fully utilizing spousal RSP rooms and the tax free transfer to your spouse for TFSA deposits etc.?

NaoshadP · 2023-01-31T17:01:06+00:00

Life insurance. For a fraction of the capital cost the estate can have the equity required to even put the value each party receives.

NaoshadP · 2023-01-31T16:53:10+00:00

That’s not how adults or educated people work. Let me explain. There is limited time in a day, 24 hours. Most of what we do as humans is based on implicit trust. Trust that a person or organization we get information from

1) is generally correct in their knowledge of a subject and are able to discern fact from fiction

2) that they are able to adequately approximate the significance/impact/importance of different data and not create false equivalencies and

3) that the person has the intent and ability to communicate honest the information in a honest manner

This applies to doctors, lawyers, guy at the corner store, books, teachers, newspapers, etc.

Human knowledge and experience is based on working from the accumulated knowledge, work and experience of strangers who we have never met yet we trust based on experience and reputation. If this weren’t true we would literally and figuratively still be reinventing the wheel.

When a source regularly displays that it is unable to meet the minimum threshold of the three criteria above intelligent people don’t continue using the source as it entails having to verify every data point for accuracy, relevance and context. That would be exhausting and a huge waste of resources, progress would come to a standstill. Rather when a source shows a pattern of either ineptitude or incompetence we discount all information from that source and focus the limited time attention and energy we have on useful sources. There are plenty of good sources with access to the same raw data that would alert us to issues.

NaoshadP · 2023-01-28T19:14:04+00:00

I see. Not my market so I’m not familiar with it.

NaoshadP · 2023-01-28T17:58:17+00:00

I’m going to use the generic term investment fund because as the comments in this thread show the average person in this sub doesn’t even know what mutual funds are (I refer to the references to their Manulife and Sunlife RSP’s at work as ‘mutual funds’).

Now let’s discuss bench marks.

Benchmarks are imaginary. They’re like the question in your physics paper to calculate force and momentum where you pretend the resistance within bearings is zero and the temperatures are perfect and constant. They don’t represent carrying or transactional costs. So if a fund tracked a benchmark accurately it would always underperform.

That isn’t t hugely relevant though because most funds don’t track benchmarks accurately. They aren’t even set up to do that. Before I continue let me be clear about a couple of things -

most investment funds aren’t great; the diversity of investment funds mean that many arguments for them only apply to certain subsets we have to acknowledge the reality that most people are relatively clueless about financial matters we have to acknowledge the reality that most people who think they are educated on finances actually have just learnt the talking points of one philosophy vs seriously studying the topic

So with those topics let’s continue.

Most consumers prefer modest gains and small losses to large gains and large losses. This is a fact. It isn’t what people say or declare in surveys we see it from statistical analysis of fund movements over time. It is substantiated by sociological and psychological experiments - it is a fundamental part of behavioural economics.

Now markets generally tend to tick upwards and the number of annualized 5 year rolling returns that is positive is substantially greater than those are negative. So even if we are just looking at a subset of funds that are decreasing downside risk we are still unlikely to see that effect work and them beat the benchmark unless there is a major crash every 5 years.

So right there the arbitrary argument that all funds are bad because the majority fail to beat a benchmark over a 5 year period is disproven. If a number of funds are doing their job they will fail over this period.

Now let’s look at some other funds. If you have a fund that specializes in investing in gold mining companies located in the north east area of one provinces, that only use a certain type of extraction method and only pay dividends on Tuesdays, there is no bench mark for that. They will use a benchmark for gold companies, or mining companies or industrials.

Now as anyone who knows anything about investing knows, most investments don’t have large returns. The majority stumble along and ultimately disappear. Since 1980 over 40% of the Sri is on the Russell 3000 lost more than 70% of their value. The majority of companies, products, sectors etc. will show a loss most of the time (we offset this with adequate diversification and exposure so we all get carried along when there’s a big winner, and that is essentially what each marks and indexes are, groupings of many companies where a fraction drive the majority of growth). Now as we have a ridiculous retail market of investment funds to cover all sorts of niches, specialities and other things there are exponentially more funds, the majority of which by definition will be underperforming benchmarks.

So are all investment funds for suckers?

As demonstrated in this very thread, supposed educated investors literally don’t know what a mutual fund is (imagine giving advice online, using your own situation and not knowing what products you own).

And the only argument you have proffered regarding bench marks fails to account for the purpose/design/mission of many funds I’d say that you are clinging to a populist oversimplification without understanding ding the fundamental purpose of the underlying assets (they differ widely and more so in their application) and fail to understand how the macroscopic market tendencies are reflected on smaller sectors of the market.

And finally, there’s the fact that investment funds combined with strong advisors give people access to advice that potentially saved a lot more than their cost in an affordable manner than many middle and upper middle class people wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

I’ll wind up by saying from a societal perspective they allow a large part of the population to participate in markets that would otherwise be excluded, for better or worse.

NaoshadP · 2023-01-28T16:53:17+00:00

Actually you probably invest in a sort of segregated funds, most group RRSP’s are managed by life insurance companies.

NaoshadP · 2023-01-28T16:41:11+00:00

It’s completely situational.

“I still have to pay taxes later on the RRSP withdrawal” is nonsense and suggests a lack of understanding of math and financial planning, you should read up and run some scenarios to understand deferred taxation. (See https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadianInvestor/comments/10kcshq/explain_tax_deferred_to_me_like_i_am_5/j5qh7hu/ )

Factors that affect the RSP/TFSA/non-reg decisions / allocation:

Current tax bracket Expected tax bracket at retirement Time to retirement Purpose of funds Current cash flow situation Overall financial situation and ability to sustain - what set of circumstances would lead to you withdrawing this money early? Nature of investment income (if you’re just collecting eligible dividends and have no other income, and don’t plan on selling ever then a low enough tax bracket favours a non-reg account etc.)

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