Birds Thursday, October 17, 2019
Bob Wiggins – did a little housekeeping. The headline may have been “No dues increase for 2020” , but Bob also pointed out that our membership is at 25. The club would benefit from having 5 more people to fill out the roster to 30. Lawyer, realtor, printer, pharmacist, carpet seller.
The other thing Bob and I discussed was the current nature of the club and how it’s evolved quite organically to a more “mentorship” type of club rather than business tip driven.
The thoughts offered up for consideration from that conversation are that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in that direction and maybe we should make more of a concerted effort to bring tips more purposefully to the group. Perhaps one way to move in that direction is that even when sharing the story/anecdote sort of updates many of us have provided, perhaps see if we can ultimately walk that out into an actionable tip.
It’s a thought and definitely up for discussion if it provokes some thoughts.
Dan Kenelly – Back from out in in the valley in BC. When reading the papers out there, one of the big subjects is the upcoming construction on the TransCanada Highway between Golden and Field and the impact of multiple temporary closures over the next 3 to 4 years (!) .
One of the anticipated effects is 10k vehicles a day through Radium and highway 3 during construction. Could be a gold mine for Radium and that area. More details on the construction can be found in this Herald article: https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/major-detours-over-years-loom-on-trans-canada-highway-through-rockies
Last note from Dan was that there a lot of wildlife on the move in the mountains and at the lake.
Don Doolan – mostly Montana the last little while.
Don noted a brand of outdoor cookstoves/bbq’s that he hadn’t seen much of in Canada. He mentioned it mostly as a possible opportunity for Ross and Barbecues Galore since it’s good quality USA-made stuff. You can get a look at some of it at this link: https://www.campchef.com/smokers-grills/grills.html.
Don also told the story of his son in law Paul getting turned away at the border because his truck was too dirty. Weeds on the underside afte Paul had been doing work in the fields. Turns out he’s not the first guy who’s been turned away for that reason. Paul found that out from the woman at the Canadian duty-free store who let him borrow the store hose to clean off the underside of the truck. (He also wasn’t the first one she’d done that for. ????)
Anyway, once he’d done that – he was allowed through no problem.
Last note from Don was a question about how all this blue light from our screens affects our vision and whether there’d been any meaningful research about the subject. As a matter of fact, there was a piece recently and you can peruse it here: https://opto.ca/health-library/blue-light-is-there-risk-of-harm. The long and short of it is that yes, too much blue light can permanently damage your vision, in some people, to the point of causing symptoms similar to macular degeneration.
Brad Pachal
– gave the Lockhart Report (Shouldn’t that be the name of a TV show?) Anyway, Andy is recovering nicely from carpal tunnel syndrome surgery. He indicated to Brad that there was immediate relief from some of the nerve pain he’d been experiencing. Sounded promising.
Brad also had this great note about a beautiful home built by Eaton’s in Maple creek. Price? $997. Price of Hot Air Heating Plant: $112 Price of Plumbing Material? The princely sum of $169.
Mike Mikkelson
– Spent a little time in Erie Pennsylvania. He’s *never* seen so much heated emotion, he used the word hatred, between the two party camps. Bitterly, bitterly partisan. He found it hard to imagine anyone reunifying the country down there – and had a little shake of the head about our election and the possibilities.
He had a good time in Chicago. Loves it there.
Dwayne Vinck
– In The hopper – Dwayne mentioned a small company that had patent rights for a technology/process that extracts oil from botanicals, including for the premium cannabis market.
Dwayne provided an email update on the 23rd that said:
“ Dear All,
Please see attached press release which reports our first day of public trading is Thursday, Oct. 24.
Here is a link to our SEDAR profile where you can find financial reports and our prospectus.
Our profile on Canadian Securities Exchange
Thanks,
Me dXtractor Corp.
Dwayne Vinck, CPA, CA, CFO”
Dwayne had also attached a PDF document to the email which you can read by clicking on “ MedXtractor MXT – Public Listing “.
Ross Mikkelsen
– survived southern Germany and Oktoberfest. Mind-blowing event! 6 million visitors to what is essentially a folk festival.
Minimum serving of beer is 1 liter
. Here’s what that looks like:
Ross also went through a couple of museums in Munich and Nuremberg. it was a pretty chilling counterpoint to Oktoberfest. Also chilling to seeing the evidence of an educated population becoming subservient to one person and or cult. We all know how that worked out.
Dave Hicks – Busines is picking up. Quoting a lot of work, a lot of it back up in the mountains. Road Trip! Again.
Mel Gibson
– the insurance industry is approving the electronic pink card. *Some* people aren’t quite ready for it. At the scene of an accident on Sarcee Trail, one of the participants had the electronic card and the policeman wouldn’t accept it. Said she still needed a pink card on paper. Eventually, he allowed its use but made her bring her phone to the police car to collect the information.
Sean Baylis – has been away at United Way major donor event. He noted that we’re moving into that season of charitable giving, so for anyone has a good year, United Way is a great opportunity to give back. United Way is down about 20% and is hurting – and when they hurt, of course, many people feel the impact.
On the investment side, last week was a good week after phase 1 of the US-China “trade deal”. The current Director of the United States National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, commented that “…the music has changed.”
Heading into earnings season and the majority of companies so far are beating earnings estimates. JP Morgan is one of many pointing to good things.
Sean noted that noise around Trump can cause some confusion, but he and RBC pay attention to fundamentals like dividend-paying companies, and it’s still important. Majority of growth in portfolios will come from dividend rather than capital gains. Naturally, it always comes back to earnings.
RBC optimistic heading into the fall. A rate cut in the US in the fall would be good for equities, ditto actual signing of this trade deal between the US and China. Portfolios up about 10% on average.
Matt Dart
– will be part of the corporate dog and pony show in Dallas next week for clients including Cowboys games – 4th tier of the stadium (about the distance from here to Bragg Creek down to the field…). Anyway, front row in the section: $500 us each – $2600 CAD for “entertainment”. Cough. Capacity at the stadium is 100,000. Hopefully a good time.
Thinking of other entertainment for clients and, naturally, they’ll take them to a gun range. Tour of duty includes Dallas, Oklahoma City, two factories and then gone for training, so he’ll be back in a couple of weeks
George Doherty- Special thanks to Gord for tickets to the Rotary Club lunch. The speaker was mind-opening.
George also mentioned the terrific documentary on Bill Gates. Among the takeaways – Bill Gates’ Brain! 5 books a day and retains 90%!! See the trailer for the documentary here: https://youtu.be/aCv29JKmHNY
Tony Fisher
– took us on a mini “video killed the radio stars” trip down memory lane as he sprung off the Bill Gates mention to talk about the origin of pcs, specifically the gaming origins B. A. (Before Atari).
Bob Wiggins hopped in at this point to mention that when he investigated buying a computer in ’79-80, the “salesperson” basically told him the “use case” for a personal computer was: recipes and Christmas card lists. Bet that guy also ended up thinking the Internet was a fad too.
Anyway, Tony was in Seattle when Pong came out. But Computer space was the first big video game.
Tony had the first one in Calgary at U of C. The game was so primitive that it used a can for coin collection, BUT they made $700 a WEEK in revenue from that machine at one site.
Then he recollected seeing Pac-Man for the first time in Tokyo. The whole game was on the old logic boards and you could get them “out back”. So, Tony did and had the first PacMan game in Calgary too.
JD MacDonald
– They had 24 people for thanksgiving. Great time and the entire family enjoyed it. All except the family farmers who were sitting on 3000 acres of work still to go.
From a business standpoint, there have been encouraging signs with return calls from quotes that have gone out.
JD also noted that supplies have gone up 3-7% and even 11%. Tough to price ahead when buying having to price in potential tariff impact and uncertainty.
