I wanted to mention an internet scam to watch out for. I got a fake notice that my MicroSoft365 password needed to be updated. It sounded plausible and they said I could update or use the same password and asked me to enter my password. I almost did it but then looked and saw the URL was not looking right. It was a definite and dangerous came. To up0date a password always make sure you log in directly.
By the way my system has none of your personal information except your email and your password that you use here. I don’t ever see or store any credit card numbers. PayPal does that for me. Ideally you could use a simple password on my system that is not one you use elsewhere.
Yesterday, the S&P 500 was roughly unchanged while Toronto was down 0.4%.
This morning, VISA is down 5.5%. I will be updating the report for VISA soon. It’s a strong long term bet. It’s not cheap but I think it’s a good long term investment. But there is big news here, Amazon will stop accepting U.K Visa cards as of January 19, 2022 in a fight over the high credit card fees. This could be a big deal as Amazon is of course very powerful. But is Amazon powerful enough to dictate what credit card its customers can use? Costso has had that power but very few if any other retailers have had such power. There is no doubt that credit card fees are very lucrative. So there is some risk to VISA and the other credit card companies.
Canadian inflation number for October is out this morning and it is 4.7% year over year. The market still seems to be assuming this is somewhat temporary. One good thing for those collecting is that there should be a meaningful increase to the Canada Pension Plan amounts in January. I think maybe 3%. They use the average of the last 12 inflation numbers. Old Age pensions are also fully indexed but they adjust every three months from what I understand and so have already been getting increases this year.