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essayofthoughts · 7 years

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Fic prompt: Pietro lives and Natasha mentors him on the team like Clint with Wanda. She sees a bit of her younger self in him ("heroes don't help people like me" mentality, one track mind, clings to the few people he trusts) and he acts annoyed but admires the bajeezes out of her. Can be serious or basically one long "bother figure" scene from bnn.

Sorry this took so long for me to get to. I assume that “bnn” refers to Brooklyn 99? I’m afraid I haven’t watched it and probably never will, so I don’t know what you are referring to here.

Send me fic prompts!

AO3 Mirror.

i.He resents it, when he wakes - resents her. Not Wanda, not ever Wanda, but Romanoff, the Black Widow. Romanoff has been teaching Wanda while he heals, and on some level he resents this, that Natasha was there to spend time with his sister, was, like Barton and the Vision, there for his sister when she needed him most.

(When she needed him most because he couldn’t be there.)

Wanda is farther ahead in training than him and he doesn’t resent this, he never could, he would always prefer Wanda to be prepared for the world but… it does sadden him. There is a disconnect, now, a distance. He can learn some things from her mind, some facts and figures, some information and forms, but so much of it is muscle memory, how to fall and how to roll, how to target and he falls still farther behind as he heals and mends, regains muscle mass and mobility, finding his speed again.

He resents Romanoff for this, for causing this, this disconnect and distance, putting him farther behind his sister so he must race to catch up when his speed is at it’s most uncooperative.

When he goes to train it is with dragging feet, even as he knows it to be necessary.

ii.He rises from the Cradle to return to Wanda’s side and-

He is not forbidden it, not exactly, Wanda welcomes him back with the same sun-bright gladness they have always felt at reunion, the cathedral of her mind so brightly sun-lit and shining, shimmering with light that shows the cracks in the stone, shows where the underlying wood of the synagogue waits beneath.

Wanda is glad to have him back, the archer looks at him with gratefulness, the Vision takes his hand and shakes it and says, “I am most pleased to properly meet you, Mr. Maximoff.”

“You’re behind,” says Romanoff. “Your sister can protect herself better than you can right now. Come on, up. We’re teaching you to spar.”

He spars. He spars slowly, because his speed is at it’s most uncooperative, coming in fits and starts like the beginning, straining against his control or relaxing to nothingness and so he finds himself restraining nothing.

And then suddenly the blue returns, a bright blur of it, and he’s ploughed into the wall across the training room with no warning.

Romanoff crouches next to him, an icepack in hand. “Gotta be careful, flyboy,” she says, pressing the ice to his bleeding face. “You’ll end up like Clint at this rate.”

When the bleeding has slowed they start again. “Could I not have Wanda here?” he asks. “She helped me control my speed when we first-”

“And risk Wanda getting hurt if you both fail?” Romanoff asks, both eyebrows raised. “You’re as bad as Steve.”

When Wanda sees him later, his face is covered in cuts but they’re scabbed over now, the scabs starting to peel off smooth flesh. Her hands go to her mouth, eyes wide with shock before she crosses to him, ignoring the others sitting in a circle.

Her hands are gentle on his bruises.

“I should have been there,” she whispers. “I could help you find your blue, keep it in your control-”

He bows her head to her soft hands and cannot help how much he resents Romanoff for making him train alone.

iii.“You’re not doing well in training, Nat says.”

It’s Barton, perched next to him on the roof. He knows Wanda comes up here when she has nightmares and knows that Barton sometimes joins her - that he’d talked her down and away from the ledge while he’d been healing in the cradle. Even now there’s a small scruffy looking crow beside the archer, and his sister’s big and glossy attendants watch him with a haughty eye.

“Pietro?”

He sighs, looks down at his linked hands. Tries really, really hard not to resent Romanoff and her smug little smile and the way she always seems to know - it’s like Wanda but more irritating, because with his sister he at least always knows that she knows things to keep them both safe, that she cares for both of their well-being and doesn’t have ulterior motives. Wanda has a right to know him that well, to understand, to act on both their behalfs. Romanoff does not.

He tries not to resent Romanoff, and he fails.

“Its…,” he starts. “My speed. It’s like it was in the beginning. Fits and starts.”

“Mhm?” Clint’s hum is mildly interested and his raised eyebrows as he sips his beer makes Pietro gesture helplessly.

“I just… It is there and then it is not there, so I hold it and restrain it so I can relax into it and then it is gone and I am slow or it is gone so I let go and then it is back and-” he makes a harsh gesture, a sweeping motion. “Bang. I run into a wall.”

Clint laughs, gestures with his bottle. “You’re gonna end up like me.”

(“You’ll end up like Clint at this rate.”)

It’s easier, though, from Clint. Clint understands the debt that’s strung between the three of them - owing Wanda for Pietro’s life almost-lost. Clint offers kindness and understanding where Romanoff offers only smug smiles and her smug knowing.

“That is what Romanoff said too.”

Clint sips his beer, considers. “Why not come stay at the farm for a bit? Get yourself a bit of legroom.”

The farm is open space, a large house and so much space to run in that Pietro never fears colliding with anything. Wanda goes with him, and her hand in his, her by his side, makes him feel, for a little while, like everything is fine, like it is normal, that this disconnect and distance placed between them is going to ease and fade.

Then, one morning, Romanoff is waiting for them at breakfast.

“Come on, quicksilver,” she says. “Gonna keep hiding from practice?”

iv.He resents Natasha. He resents her putting this distance between him and Wanda, resents her enforcing it by not letting them train together - they, who have always been together, at one another’s sides, pillars to each other, a force unsundered - by dragging him back to the base to keep on training.

“Hey, it could be worse,” she says. “I could have dragged your sister back too, and then she’d be getting even further ahead.”

Pietro spits blood and pushes himself up. “So what,” he says. “I should be grateful?”

Natasha shrugs, shifts her stance, raises her fists. “This way,” she says, “It’s less of a game of catch up.”

Pietro lunges.

He doesn’t know how he keeps missing her. He may not have his speed back properly yet, it still likes to come in fits and starts, vanishing into the aether as it pleases. He lunges and puts all his speed behind it and she still steps out of the way like it’s nothing. He gives no hint of his plans and she still knows. It’s like she can read his face and stance as well as Wanda, except she is not Wanda and she has no right to know him like this.

“You’re predictable blueboy,” she says. “You go for the most obvious and straightforward.”

Well then. He supposes he’s going to have to sidestep around this.

That’s what he does. Next time they spar, when his blue is tight and close on his leash, he lets it out, just enough to blur forwards, yes, where Natasha’s fist is waiting for him, and then behind her, past her fist, and quick enough to knock her down.

He grins at the sound of her head thumping to the sparring mat, turns to smirk down at her where she laughs.

“Not bad,” she says, and then kicks his legs out from under him. “Could be better.”

v.He and Natasha wait on the roof on the day Clint is to return Wanda from the farm. He’s not quite up to scratch yet - and he still resents Natasha, for her training, for her smugness, for her knowing, for this distance and disconnect between himself and Wanda.

But he thinks he understands her a little now, understands why she wouldn’t want Wanda around while he regains his control of his speed - because he needs to control it on his own, without using Wanda as a crutch, just as much as the need to keep Wanda safe from accidents - why she has been so insistent on training him.

He is better now, if not yet quite good enough, and they stand together and wait for the Quinjet.

They wait.

They wait some more.

They keep on waiting til dusk when Natasha’s phone starts singing Pocket Full of Sunshine.

“Laura?” she asks. “Hang on, hang on, I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

“Is Clint with you?” comes Laura’s urgent voice. “He hasn’t come back yet.”

Natasha glances to Pietro. “He hasn’t shown up at all, him or Wanda.”

Laura’s voice is distinctly and clearly worried. “They set off this morning.”

Natasha’s shoulders straighten, something in the set of her face turns to stone. “I’ll find them,” she promises. “I’ll call you soon Laura. Tell the kids not to worry.”

She ends the call, one hand slipping the phone into her pocket, the other rising to the arrow necklace she never takes off. She breathes slowly, deeply, eyes focussed on something distant, sometimes darting to some other distant thing.

“They took a Quinjet, yes?” Pietro asks. “Stark made them.”

Natasha’s hand fists around the necklace before loosing, dropping to her side like nothing was wrong. “Yes,” she says. “And what Stark makes rarely malfunctions.”

Pietro finds his speed, grips it with all his might. “I’ll find him,” he says.

It’s hard to focus on everything with his speed like this, having to focus on taming it to his will just as much as everything around him, but he finds Stark in his lab in the basement, head half-inside the guts of a very old computer monitor.

“Stark.”

Stark’s face is rimed with dust and soot as he pulls it out of the computer. “Roadrunner,” he says. “Where’s Sabrina?”

It takes Pietro a moment to parse that Stark probably means Wanda. “We don’t know. We need you to track the Quinjet Clint was using.”

“Ever heard of ‘please’?” Stark asks, already wading through tools and wiring to his console. “FRIDAY, can you find it?” Stark’s fingers are as precise and focussed on his keyboard as Wanda is with her scarlet, typing in commands in a blur. “Who’s ‘we’ anyway?”

“Romanoff.”

Who, incidentally, had just turned up, slightly out of breath, at the door.

“Something happen?”

Pietro’s glare at Stark’s back is venomous.

“We can handle it,” Natasha says. “Where is it?”

Stark’s AI throws up a map, Stark’s fingers enlarge it.

“Right about…. here.”

In the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Pietro swears in Sokovian.

vi.Pietro rolls on the balls of his feet, not even considering sitting as Natasha starts up the Quinjet Stark sorted for them. His mind is roiling with worries and possibilities - If I’d been there, if I hadn’t gone back for training, if I’d been at Wanda’s side, if, if, if -

It’s not doing any good but he can’t switch it off.

“Hey, you doing ok?”

He’s not, he’s really not, but he can’t let that get to him now. It’s only him and Natasha heading out after them, anyway, after Wanda and Clint and whoever took them or took out the Quinjet.

As they near the spot, he can almost feel Natasha’s frown.

“That’s…,” she says. “That’s a SHIELD craft.”

It is. There’s their Quinjet, clean of insignias, neat and tidy, still with one of Starks JARVIS is my Copilot stickers on the window that no one had dared touch after Novi Grad, and, beside it, another Quinjet with the SHIELD eagle emblazoned on the side.

Romanoff presses a button, waves something from her screen to Pietro’s.

“Check the code,” she says. “It may have been stolen by HYDRA.”

He’s got used to the consoles now, after a little while. Much as he hates Stark, he has to admit the man has a knack for design, for making things easy to understand and work with. “HYDRA,” he says, after a moment. “One of the ones under... Alexander Pierce.”

Romanoff goes white as she sets the Quinjet down. “Pierce is dead,” she says, flicking the Quinjet into standby. “I saw him killed myself.”

Pietro frowns. “So who has it then?”

Natasha’s already at the door, checking her guns, charging up the weapons strapped to her wrists. “One of his, probably. One of his agents or technicians.”

Pietro pauses, worries the skin of his cheek between his teeth. “What would they want with Wanda?”

Natasha pulls a face, shrugs. “We’ll find out,” she says. “Go scout out.”

He’s off in a blur, dodging around obstacles, and heading for the other two Quinjets. When he risks a look backwards he sees Natasha slipping off the cloaked Quinjet, hidden in the long grass and loose rocks like the spider she’s named for.

The Avenger’s Quinjet is empty, door wide open and no sign of Wanda or Clint. So too, for that matter, is the other, but there’s tracks, big booted feet followed by a prints from a pair of crocs (probably Clint) and Wanda’s smaller boots.

The tracks lead to a safe house, and he’d all but dive in on his own, if not for the fact he knows there could be more inside and that Romanoff will never let him hear the end of it if he screws up. He doesn’t have to wait long, however, Natasha arrives and scales the building, checks in every window.

“Just them,” she says, and launches herself through the window onto the back of a man with a metal arm.

Her bracelets blaze blue with light and the man goes still.

Romanoff finds Clint in one room, tied to a chair and with a black eye. Pietro finds Wanda in a locked room, the walls made of some material he doesn’t recognise.

It’s not until they get outside that he feels Wanda’s mind against his.

“Wanda,” he breathes, and his hands cup her face, thumbs running under her eyes to check for teartracks. She wraps her arms around him, tucks her face to his shoulder the moment his hands move to her hair, and he carefully untangles the knots that have accumulated and breathes his sister in. “You are all right?”

She nods against him, letting out a long breath, slow and steady and calming. “His mind,” she whispers, and Pietro’s gaze darts to the metal-armed man still in a pile on the floor. “His mind is a ruin.”

“The man,” Clint Barton says rubbing his wrists to get circulation back. “Is Bucky Barnes.”

It’s not until later, on the Quinjet, his mind and Wanda’s running in tandem again, filling each other in with what happened, that Pietro realises: the resentment has vanished.It is no more there than the disconnect and distance he had been feeling.

#nanyoky #ask #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #mcu fic #my fic

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lovelyfantasticfart · 4 years

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caroleapellham · 5 years

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New and Improved Stress Test!

The Department of Finance announced Tuesday changes to the mortgage stress test. “The new benchmark rate will be the weekly median 5-year fixed insured mortgage rate from mortgage insurance applications, plus 2%.” This change is specific to insured mortgages (i.e. mortgages with a down payment of less than 20%) and takes affect on April 6.

Do you intend on getting an uninsured mortgage? Have no fear! The Department of Finance stated that, “the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) also announced [Tuesday] that it is considering the same new benchmark rate to determine the minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages. OSFI is seeking input from interested stakeholders on this proposal before March 17, 2020.”

Sound like word salad? Ya, we thought so too. Let’s put it into really simple terms.

Presently, when you apply for a mortgage there are two important interest rates lenders use to process your mortgage application. The first is the contract rate. This is how much interest you’ll actually pay. The second is the qualifying rate, also known as the stress test. This is a rate higher than your contract rate, which is used to see if you’ll still be able to pay your mortgage even if rates increase in the near future.

The qualifying rate has changed over the last several years, but right now, it is the higher of: your contract rate plus 2%, OR the Bank of Canada’s benchmark rate. The benchmark rate is the previous week’s average 5 year posted (i.e. published) rate from the six big banks. What the Department of Finance has announced is that going forward, with regards to insured mortgages, they will instead use the average 5 year rate borrowers actually got in the previous week, plus 2%.

Contract rate: the actual interest rate you pay on your mortgage.

Qualifying rate (ie the stress test): an interest rate higher than your agreed contract rate. This rate is used to judge your ability to continue making your mortgage payments even if interest rates go up.

Purpose of the stress test

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institution’s (OSFI) intention in introducing the stress test in 2012 was to help limit Canadian household debt and to cool hot housing markets. However, it gradually created other complications. Despite decreasing prices and the number of eligible buyers, it caused a stall in sales because existing owners didn’t want to take a loss on equity. This had a domino effect and has prevented many existing owners from moving into new homes, thereby preventing would-be owners from making a purchase. The biggest glaring problem with how the qualifying rate is currently calculated is that the big banks’ posted rates are frequently much higher than what borrowers pay. It’s just not realistic.

John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty, appeared on BNN Bloomberg and explained that in the last two years the interest rate on five year mortgages has dropped about 0.45% but the qualifying rate is actually up 0.05%. The difference causes the stress test to be about 2.5% rather than the 2% OSFI has been aiming for.

“When rates drop,” Pasalis said, “we want our housing markets to be able to respond to these lower interest rates and [they weren’t] because they’re effectively pegged at the Bank of Canada rate which is a little bit inflated right now.” Using the weekly median 5-year fixed insured mortgage rate will make the stress test more flexible and realistic.

So, is this new qualifying measure on the stress test going to help smooth things over?

Mixed reviews

“Prior to this,” said Robert McLister in a Globe and Mail article, “the Big Six banks determined the benchmark rate… It’s taken a few years, but officials have finally realized that’s not a good idea. For well over a year, banks have refused to cut their posted five-year rates enough to reduce this all-important qualifying rate. That’s kept the stress test unnecessarily difficult, blocking thousands of borrowers from qualifying for the best mortgage – or qualifying at all.”

Elaine Taylor, chair of MPC (Mortgage Professionals Canada) praised the change in a news conference, but stated, “our association believes a 200-basis point test is too high, especially given our current economic climate and general expectations of future interests rates. Uncoupling the stress test from the Bank of Canada rate is the right public policy move but a reduction in the percentage test itself is also needed.”

Pasalis agrees this move isn’t big enough to make a substantial difference in the housing market. “This is really just going to impact people who are buying at the absolute margin... So it’s probably going to have some impact but not as much as some people might think.”

McLister believes the announcement is good news for sellers, but maybe not for buyers. He told BNN Bloomberg, “Barring some unexpected shock or rate spike this spring (both seemingly unlikely), this new, easier stress test should be music to the ears of home sellers. Prices in hot markets will likely surge further, leaving homebuyers with little relief until sellers deem the increases sufficient enough to put more homes on the market. As home values and loan-to-income ratios climb, don’t discount regulators’ will to maintain financial stability. We could very well see further credit policy tightening within a year or so if home values boil over.”

And there’s another concern consumers should think about. Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics, said in an article, “The proposed change to the mortgage stress tests could put even more upward pressure on house prices over the next 12 months, by increasing the amount that buyers can borrow by more than [three per cent]. With the Bank of Canada already concerned about the impact that the recent loosening of financial conditions is having on the housing market, this is another reason to believe that it will leave its policy rate unchanged.”

Overview

Regardless what your take is on the issue, it’s obvious that the Federal government is taking the housing issue seriously. Just two months ago, in a long list of to do’s the Prime Minister instructed the new Minister for Finance, Bill Morneau, to review the mortgage stress test and make it more dynamic. There are many many issues the Minister could have tackled first but this is the one he picked. The stress test has not been working effectively. They see that and they’re trying to fix it.

If this overview still sounds like word salad, or if you’d like other details on the mortgage world, please contact me at [email protected] or call me at 403-241-3255.

History of the Stress Test

2012: OSFI releases its Residential Mortgage Underwriting Practices and Procedures Guideline (Guideline B-20) which includes an expectation that lenders should stress test borrowers (with variable rate mortgages and insured mortgages with terms shorter than 5 years) for adverse conditions.

2016: OSFI extends the stress test to cover all insured mortgages.

2018: OSFI specifies that potential borrowers must qualify for the higher of: their contracted mortgage rate plus 2% OR the Bank of Canada’s 5-year benchmark fixed rate. The stress test is to be used on ALL mortgage applications.

2020: Department of Finance dictates that as of April 6 all insured mortgages must qualify for the Bank of Canada’s weekly median 5 year fixed insured mortgage rate PLUS 2%.

New and Improved Stress Test! published first on https://mortgagesforless.tumblr.com

#mortgages #best mortgage lenders #finance #real estate

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mortgagesforless · 5 years

Text

New and Improved Stress Test!

Sound like word salad? Ya, we thought so too. Let’s put it into really simple terms.

Contract rate: the actual interest rate you pay on your mortgage.

Purpose of the stress test

So, is this new qualifying measure on the stress test going to help smooth things over?

Mixed reviews

Overview

If this overview still sounds like word salad, or if you’d like other details on the mortgage world, please contact me at [email protected] or call me at 403-241-3255.

History of the Stress Test

2016: OSFI extends the stress test to cover all insured mortgages.

2020: Department of Finance dictates that as of April 6 all insured mortgages must qualify for the Bank of Canada’s weekly median 5 year fixed insured mortgage rate PLUS 2%.

#mortgages #best mortgage lenders #finance

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mikemortgage · 6 years

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Bank of Canada’s next rate move depends on data, says Stephen Poloz, but hike still on the table

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said he is keeping a close eye on developments in the nation’s housing market, as well as global trade tensions and the impact of lower oil prices, as he gauges the timing of his next interest rate increase.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Poloz cited those three issues as key determinants of future policy, even as he reiterated his belief that borrowing costs are still likely to go higher.

“It’s data dependent,” Poloz said. “It will depend on how the economy responds to the shocks we’ve described.”

Gloomy forecasts can't be going over well at the Ministry of Finance

Canada’s economy may soon endure something it hasn’t faced in 68 years, according to BCA

The number of Canadians finding it tough to make ends meet is going up

The comments are in line with recent indications from the central bank that there’s less urgency in its push toward higher interest rates as the economy grapples with slumping oil prices. After five interest rate increases since mid-2017, markets are now anticipating the central bank will have no more than one more rate increase lined up before pausing indefinitely.

Unsettled Housing

One issue the Bank of Canada has been monitoring closely is the economy’s sensitivity to higher rates, particularly in housing, where the the increased borrowing costs have led to a a slumping activity in major markets like Toronto and Vancouver. As he gauges future policy, Poloz said Wednesday the housing market hasn’t “quite settled down” and he’d like to see it stabilize to know “where we stand.”

The comments on housing “suggests to me we may be on a pause for awhile,” given the recent weakness in home sales and prices,” Craig Fehr, strategist at Edward Jones & Co., told BNN Bloomberg Television after the Poloz interview.

At the same time, Poloz fended off criticism that recent tightening by some central banks was ill conceived and said higher interest rates will eventually be warranted in Canada given the economy is already at near capacity with inflation at target.

“We are at a stage in the cycle where it always looks like monetary policy is doing the wrong thing,” Poloz said. Given the economy is “near its steady state, interest rates also should be near their steady state.”

Poloz said the actual level of that steady state is still “an open question” but the central bank estimates it’s between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent. The Bank of Canada’s policy rate is currently at 1.75 per cent.

Bloomberg.com

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years

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Conflicting Opinions?

TorontoRealtyBlog

That’s the truth of it: we’re just about to head into August, and you really can’t tell anything about the overall market by looking at one slow month in the summer.

Same goes for December, save for perhaps the first week to ten days.

But would anybody in their right mind sit down in the first week of January, analyze the December market statistics, and try to use them to predict what lays ahead in January and February?

December just isn’t your typical month in the real estate calendar, and by the same token, neither is August.

I sat down to film my Pick5 video on Wednesday afternoon, and as I searched by area with the MLS mapping tool, there wasn’t a single area in the city in which I could find five quality properties to feature, analyze, and discuss.

Listings are light right now, but that’s to be expected – it’s the summer.

And things are only going to get slower as we move through August.

This is the first time since the start of January that I’ve found myself without a single listing.

I had a listing up until this morning, but we’re taking it off the market. The listing is a detached house, over $2M, located north of the 401. So basically one of the toughest properties to sell in the city right now, and there is a lot of competition.

So rather than letting the property sit on the market all summer long, rotting, getting stale, and encouraging lowball bids, we figured we would “put some time in between listings,” as I always say, stop the “days on market” from racking up on MLS, and give the listing a refresh in the second week of September.

Not every seller has that luxury, of course. Some sellers are selling because they’ve just bought, and they need to sell.

Of course, not every agent has that luxury either. I’m doing what’s right for the seller in the long run, and I know the business is there down the line. Most listing agents would n-e-v-e-r terminate a listing before the contract is up, because they’re afraid of losing it. And dare I say, that like many buyers that use “hope” and “faith,” and are naive when they submit offers of the list price in competition, many listing agents just “hope” a buyer will come along to make an offer on their stale, over-priced listing in the slowest period of the year.

So what can we really learn from the next six weeks in the Toronto real estate market?

Not a whole heck of a lot, at least in terms of what to expect moving forward.

If you’re a buyer, well holy cow – get out there! New listings are scarce, yes. But in certain pockets (like the one I mentioned above), there’s a logjam of properties. And with August typically being a slow month, there just might be deals to be had, in certain market segments.

I’ll still most likely write a blog in the first week of August, analyzing the July-stats, and trying to draw conclusions. But as you saw last month, even I was willing to suggest that the stats, and what I was experiencing out in the market, didn’t always correspond.

We see this a lot in the media too.

Of course, that can be said of virtually any topic, or industry, or especially when it comes to politics.

Look down south and compare Fox News to CNN.

Now I’m not ignorant, so clearly I don’t watch or support Fox News. But as big of a fan of CNN as I am (not to mention free speech, humanity, common sense, and everything that goes in the opposite direction of Donald Trump), I will admit that even CNN goes too far in the other direction sometimes. It almost risks undermining their integrity, at times.

Here in Toronto, we have the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star, which basically report the same story, with completely different facts and conclusions. The two newspapers could literally feature a photo of a bug on a windshield on their front covers, and one headline would read “Poor Bug Gets Squashed By Bad Driver,” and the other would read, “Hero Driver Takes Out Nuisance Bug.”

Like I said, we could play this game all day.

And when it comes to real estate, this theme is ever-present.

Take a look at these three headlines:

Now this set of headlines is tremendously ironic, because all of them are from BNN.

But right next to “housing market bottoming out,” we have “home prices set to fall further.”

And this isn’t even a case of The Star vs. The Sun – it’s the same media outlet!

Here’s one I saved from earlier in the month, when the June stats were released:

Global reports negativity – that sales in Canada are down to a 5-year-low, and down 10% since last year.

Financial Post reports positivity – that Toronto represents Canada’s biggest gain in home sales this year. Using Toronto to lead Canada is a bit of creative story-telling.

And last but not least, Globe & Mail tells us that a 10% drop is actually a plus.

If you’re a buyer or a seller out there, how the hell do you make sense of all this?

So try today’s headline on for size:

“Toronto, Vancouver housing markets still ‘highly vulnerable’: CMHC”

That was written in the Globe & Mail on Wednesday.

And if you read the article in full, you’ll see that even the CMHC doesn’t really know how to view the market, or even how to issue their own warnings, risk assessments, and outlooks.

From the article:

Despite slowing sales, CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan said the warnings about vulnerability have not been adjusted in Toronto and Vancouver because the agency needs long-term evidence that the market is changing.

“Prices can fluctuate and be up one quarter, down the next, and if every quarter we’re reacting to that and changing our message, it becomes a little more confusing what the overall assessment of the market might be,” he said.

CMHC’s assessment of risk in Toronto’s market has been unchanged since October, 2016, while Vancouver’s assessment has been unchanged since July, 2017.

–

So essentially, the CMHC is explaining that market “prices can fluctuate,” which is great, because all this time – I didn’t know that…

But they’re also telling us that they prefer to be behind the market, than in front of it. They like to make predictions based on what’s happened in the past, and they’re weary of altering those predictions for the future, until they have more past data.

Great.

All this time, I thought they had a crystal ball…

Better Dwelling also picked up the story:

“Canada’s National Housing Agency Thinks Canadian Real Estate Is Overvalued”

Take a look at the chart that dominated their article:

(Source: CMHC & Better Dwelling)

Yeah, well no kidding the CMHC don’t like changing their market outlooks!

There are eighty different assessments in that graph. Eight-zero.

And only ONE of them has been altered. Looks like Winnipeg is heating up!

So what then would you make of a headline like this:

“‘Market has bottomed out’: Housing prices in Toronto region set to climb again after brief slump”

Well, if you’re like me, you’re wondering

a) Who said this b) Why c) With what data

Was Albert Einstein’s great-great grandchild interviewed for this piece?

Maybe a few rocket-scientists?

At least an unbiased economist?

Nope. None of the above, but I’ll draw an analogy for you. Have you ever seen the owner of a restaurant outside on the street telling everybody “Don’t eat here, the food is awful”?

Well, by the same token, you’re probably not going to see the CEO of one of the largest real estate brokerages in Canada tell people, “The market is going to plummet. Stock up on bottled water, and stay inside.”

“Based on our analysis the market has bottomed out,” said Phil Soper, the CEO of Royal LePage.

–

Beautiful.

The best was the intro of the article, which made opinion sound like fact:

Housing prices in Greater Toronto Area are expected to reverse course in the second half of the year after a brief slump, according to a Royal LePage forecast, despite the threat of escalating Canada-U.S. trade tensions that could dent the Ontario economy.

–

Yikes.

Now to be fair, points b) and c) above were addressed, and that’s more than can be said with respect to a lot of predictions, and a lot of opinions. Your average random Internet-dweller loves to make opinions, but never back them up with data or facts. Of course on TRB, that rarely happens. Usually the readers provide so many links that the comments get flagged as spam! (PS if you’re ever wondering why your comment didn’t show up on the message board – that’s why).

So let’s look at what Mr. Soper said as to “why” prices are set to rebound:

Soper said recent headwinds for housing prices in the Toronto area will eventually be mopped up by the current under supply of new homes, as Ontario’s population continues to grow and in-migration levels reach their highest in more than 10 years. The province saw a net gain in migration over the first quarter of 2018, a nearly 50 per cent increase from the year earlier.

“We’re nowhere near the kind of housing construction rate that we need to accommodate these people,” he said.

–

Personally, I agree with him on that point.

The net migration in Toronto is likely 3-4 times new housing completions, and that’s a recipe for a massive housing shortage.

While we’re on that topic, here’s an excellent read:

“Toronto has lots of room to grow. It’s time to let that happen”

But perhaps that’s a topic for another day.

For a Friday in the middle of the summer, there are just too many thoughts happening in this one blog…

The post Conflicting Opinions? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

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iyarpage · 7 years

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360|iDev 2017 Conference Highlights

270 attendees and 59 speakers recently descended upon Denver, Colorado to take part in the annual 360iDev conference.

360iDev 2017 had much to choose from; with seven workshops on Sunday and a whopping 58 sessions over the next three days to choose from, it was easy to find find a mix of sessions tailored to your interests — yet hard to narrow down the field of amazing talks and workshops!

In this article, I’ll share my thoughts on the conference and help you sort through all the great presentations to highlight the “can’t-miss” moments from the conference. Let’s dive in!

Keynote – Finding Your Place on the Internet – Soroush Khanlou

The conference opened with a keynote by Soroush Khanlou, a New York-based iOS developer and host of the FatalError podcast. Sourosh spoke about how you could go about making a name for yourself in the mobile app development industry with the many tools available to you, such as social networks, blogging, and podcasting. Like many worthwhile pursuits, there are no shortcuts to success; many hours of consistent effort are what it takes to make an impact. Sourosh’s own success came from many years of blogging and staying active in the community.

He suggests to look at what your idols have done and learn how they attained their success — which more likely than not took a long time. Simply copying their work and their approach is not enough. One example Sourosh gave was of a copycat’s efforts to mimic a successful Instagrammer — even to the point of flying around the world to reproduce styles and poses. But compare the number of likes between the two, and the comparison is nonexistent.

Find your own “thing”. Take inspiration from your idols, but use your own voice. The internet is huge, and there is room for everybody and everything. Keep at it — be consistent and your audience will find you.

I Wish They Had That In My School – Jessi Chartier

“It’s like trying to teach piano, by listening to Mozart, without giving them a piano to play with.”

Jessi Chartier is focused on what’s going on — or rather, going wrong — in the classroom. According to a recent study, she says that a million jobs in computer science will go unfilled by 2020. Less than 25% of high schools participate in Advanced Placement computer science courses, and many of those AP programs put theory before practice. Misguided information about what businesses require leads the curriculum to cover things such as Java development, instead of real-world needs like iOS development and mobile app development in general.

One of the main problems, she continues, is the lack of instructors. To teach at a high school level, teachers need a CS degree. Jessi is all about turning teachers into developers so they can instruct the next generation. “It’s easier to teach a teacher to develop than it is to teach a developer to teach,” she says. Her efforts also focus on helping school administrators realize that the world of coding is diversified. Meeting with administrators to help them understand the field is important, as is the fact that you don’t really need a CS degree to be viable in the mobile app development industry.

Her organization, Mobile Makers, treats learning to code like an apprenticeship and starts with coding before the theory. Otherwise, “It’s like trying to teach piano, by listening to Mozart, without giving them a piano to play with.” Jessi is also an organizer of App Camp for Girls, which aims to get girls and those who identify as girls to see coding as a career path. Organizations like these focus on getting coders to work in Xcode right away. Playgrounds are great as a digital sketchbook, but actually building real apps in Xcode goes a long way. Of course, Jessi goes into more detail than this short article can cover, and you should definitely check out the video of this talk.

Fun With iOS 11 Workshop – Sam Davies

If you were fortunate enough to attend the Sunday workshop, you would have seen fellow team member Sam Davies’ workshop on new things in coming in iOS. Sam delved into the abilities of the Encode and Decode protocols to create and parse some JSON data. He then went on to show how these come together under the Codable protocol.

Next, Sam had us working in the Drag and Drop framework, taking us slowly through adding draggability to the selected objects, and then through the ins and outs of accepting a dragged object and dropping it into place. He took time to explain properly updating the views accounting for the existing items and updating the data after the drop.

Personally, I think the coolest part of the workshop was adding CoreML to a table’s search function. In the example in the workshop, we added a CoreML model along with Natural Language Processing to search the data for words in similar context. For instance, “dance” also successfully includes “dancing” in the result. Using a sentiment-based model, the app could look at the rating of movie in the sample data and apply the appropriate emoticon. Very cool.

Practical Security – Rob Napier

Rob Napier is a builder of tree houses, hiker, proud father, and sometimes developer. His talk on security starts from the realization that it’s hard to know if you are doing security right, as security seems to be a moving target with exploits and evil-doers all around.

His talk explained Apple’s approach to security and its reliance on improved encryption and cyphers in upcoming requirements. App Transport Security (ATS) was introduced in iOS 9. Unfortunately, many developers turn that feature off in order to work around the encryption requirements and focus on the coding of their apps.

Rob explained that if you do nothing else, you should encrypt traffic to and from your apps with HTTPS. Also, you should stop turning off ATS — leave it alone! If your server host can’t accommodate encryption, get a new server host.

Another technique Rob suggests is certificate pinning. He demystified this concept with some tips for validating and rotating your certificates over future years. He also explained the versions and advantages of data encryption built into iOS. The most interesting section of the talk was on handling user passwords. You don’t ever want to see your user’s passwords, nor do you want anyone else to see them, so hash them into a string. Then simply deal with the hashed string. The only good cryptographic hash he says is SHA-2, known by many names, and the SHA-256 to SHA-512 digests under SHA-2 are suitable for most uses.

Salting and stretching are additional techniques for hardening passwords. This entails salting the password by adding some unique prefix or suffix, such as a reverse domain name, to lengthen the string. Simply adding 80ms per brute-force guess attempt adds an additional 15 million years to crack the string. For best results, start with a good password, salt it, stretch it and bake on at 350° heat for 30 minutes. Well maybe not the last part!

Rob also shared some great resources for beefing up your security. It’s definitely worth checking out this talk.

Deep Learning on iOS – Shuichi Tsutsumi

In his talk, Shuichi Tsutsumi presented some interesting examples of machine learning in action. He explored the evolution and use of deep learning on actual iOS devices. He pointed out some shortfalls of trying to reach a cloud based service without a network signal. Shuichi covers the current state of MPSCNNs and BNNs, which have been available since iOS 10.

If you’re curious about the steps required to use deep learning in your apps, he covers these in his talk, including the steps for training a model, implementing a neural network, and implementing an interface. CoreML, he goes on to explain, also employs MPSCNNs and BNNs under the hood. The former is more GPU-efficient, while the latter is more CPU-efficient.

In his final demo, he shows how simple it can be to use CoreML. Choose a model; if necessary, convert it to a CoreML model; then drop the model into your project. Add the Vision framework and you’re off and running with an app that can (mostly) identify the objects around you.

TensorFlow on iOS – Taylan Pince

“What the heck is Neural Network anyway?”

Taylan Pince starts off by saying that he should have titled his talk “What the heck is a Neural Network anyway?” He tells of his numerous years working on a client project, Field Guide: a collector’s guide of natural history. Having started around 2014, his team started out by exploring computer vision to categorize around 100 species. Using clever image processing techniques, the catalog grew substantially. Eventually, they moved to ImageNet, a research database with 14 million pre-trained images. Taylan then explained how images are weighted for predictability in a neural network.

In the last part of his talk, Taylan explores and compares Tensor Flow, CoreML, Metal Performance Shaders and the Accelerate framework. If you’re looking for a exploration of machine learning and CoreML, this talk, along with Shuichi Tsutsumi’s, are definitely worth checking out.

Playing Nice with Design – Ellen Shapiro

As developers, we can gain a lot by deploying effective and practical communication with our design team. The first challenge, though, is establishing a common terminology. Designers, iOS developers and Android developers can use terms that have very different meanings in their respective ecosystems.

To start, create a table to map out the common terminologies — and while you’re at it, do the same for font styles and colors used in your design language. The team Ellen worked on created an open source app, True Colors, to see the colors used on various devices. She also likes Sourcery to generate code to store values then share those values in files added to projects.

Creating a custom framework is another way to create building blocks that can be used in your apps.

Ellen also takes a look at the benefits and pitfalls of various frameworks. Designers can start their work on iPads and Playground Books to create resource files that the developers can run under Swift Playgrounds on iOS.

In summary, start with a small goal and build up with common paradigms; text, fonts, labels, margins, etc. This talk was full of tips that can be used to add intelligence and tools to your team’s communication.

Bonus: Check out Chris Wagner’s tutorial on Sourcery to see how to create useful templates for your team.

iOS with Continuous Delivery – Cassie Shum

Cassie explains the nuts and bolts of continuous delivery while covering a number of tools and workflow enhancements in this detail-filled talk. The difference between continuous deployment and continuous delivery is that while deployment to production is optional under continuous deployment, continuous delivery can and does deploy to deploy to production.

Continuous delivery, she says, has a reduced risk, as fewer lines of code can be delivered more frequently while changes are fresher in the developer’s mind.

She went on to break down the tools by phases: Build, Deploy, Test, and Release. Best practices include using clean architectures and design patterns to avoid the bloat of the “massive view controller”. Tools such as SwiftLint, ocLint and static code analysis make for better and consistent code. Deployment tools like fastlane automate the pain points, and HockeyApp and TestFlight get builds onto devices for testing.

This talk is packed with workflow enhancements and tools. Definitely check this one out.

Bonus: Check out Lyndsey Scott’s tutorials on fastlane to learn how to automate the drudgery of app deployment.

Fun & Games

The conference was more than just talks. There was some fun & games too!

Stump 360 Episode IV: A New Hope – Hosted by Tom Harrington

Presenting the…Experts?

The fourth annual “Stump 360” picked up where the WWDC favorite “Stump the Experts” left off. A rag-tag collection of “experts” took on the gathered audience in a game-show style battle of inane Apple trivia. The hosts presented questions to challenge the audience, who in turn wrote trivia questions on 3×5 index cards.

The event was rife with comedic moments, and most often useless trivia, with points awarded to each side. Prizes consist of extremely valuable 5-1/4-inch floppies that may have been overwritten, old eWorld and Newton stickers, and a vintage case for a PowerBook Duo battery — batteries not included. This session is a true highlight, and I look forward to many more years of Revenge of the Stump 360, or whatever they choose to call it.

Full disclosure: We did manage to stump some of the audience. However the score was close, as we “experts” were defeated by the audience members! :]

Game Dev Jam – Hosted by Ryan Polos

Every year I’ve attended 360iDev, there’s been an all-nighter dev jam where bleary-eyed developers show off their work first thing in the morning to the collected masses. This year, there were two apps employing ARKit and one watchOS app. The first was a game where players could shoot down pesky Tie Fighters. A second game placed a shuffleboard on a nearby surface then allowed players to send virtual rocks down the board. The watch app enabled wearers to watch and bid on eBay auctions.

The game dev jam and accompanying board game night provided a great way to socialize and collaborate with other developers from around the world.

Bonus: Subscribers can check out our screencasts on ARKit to see how easy it is to get started with ARKit.

We also cover ARKit in iOS 11 By Tutorials, which is available on our store.

Other Interesting Talks

There are a few more other interesting thoughts that I thought you might like to hear about.

Xcode Debugging by Aijaz Ansari was an amazing talk. I was actually overwhelmed as I tried to both keep up with his talk and take notes. Aijaz demonstrated how we could explore objects with LLDB and the clever use of Python scripting. Through two demos, he explored what was captured in LLDB and used a Python script to see the contents of the values held in a object. In the second demo, he showed how to use his script jq to loop through a blob of JSON and extract the values. Using the techniques he presented, it was possible to observe the values, validate the data and extend the output into meaningful data. This talk is definitely worth a look.

In Threads Queues and Things to Come, Ben DiFrancesco covered the current state of GCD and NSOperation queues. He explained that every iOS device has multiple cores, and therefore, has the capacity to run concurrent operations. His talk also looks at what is most likely to come to Swift concurrency in the near future.

Jean MacDonald’s talk, The Art of Responding to Criticism, takes a look at dealing with customer feedback. She explains that it’s really easy to see criticism as a personal put down. She offers sage advice on reflecting on what is being said and how the customer feels, and then offers tools and advice to help us respond in a supportive and grateful way.

Do You Want a Dystopia? was the Day Two Keynote by Jay Freeman. Jay is the creator of Cydia, the app store for jailbroken devices. Like many others, he was once a user of liveJournal.com, which was eventually acquired by a Russian company. He also warned of the potential social dangers in Twitter, and noted he favors Mastodon, a distributed service for “toots” that is potentially safer due to its infrastructure. He’s puzzled by popular social networks that make it easy to create questionable accounts and content but take a long time to remove the content — if ever. Jay’s cautionary tales are interesting, because they make you think about where you put your sensitive personal information. Check it out.

Day Three Keynote – John Wilker

On Day Three, John Wilker gave a keynote about the conference and offered some insights. This is the 11th 360iDev conference in 9 years. Along with the organizers, he thanked the speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and one special angel investor. The conference started 10 years ago, right after the iPhone SDK was announced. The organizers try to have more code than “not code” talks, and average two code talks per session. You can use the insights you glean from code talks right away. The “not code” talks are evergreen concepts that you can use years from now.

The community of 360iDev extends to support Alt-Conf and App Camp For Girls. They also offer two free tickets to the various CocoaHeads around the world. Members of the military and students also benefit from half-price tickets. Grown from John’s own underwhelming experiences at various conferences, 360iDev aims to help others become who they really are. John notes there have been some declines in attendance, but the conference is set to run again in 2018 and 2019. Early bird tickets will be available soon, as well as a Patreon campaign where you buy your own tickets though patronage. I hope to see you all at 360iDev 2018!

Where to Go From Here?

I can’t recommend 360iDev highly enough! It’s a great experience for any developer, designer or anyone involved in app production.

The hosts, John Wilker, Nicole Wilker and Tom Ortega, make the conference feel like home, and the collective masses are super-friendly. No matter what obstacles come up, I feel I cannot afford to miss this conference. Every year I’ve attended I come away re-energized, enlightened, and ready to take on the next year’s work.

Check out Steve Lipton’s summary “The Best of 360iDev 2017” for another perspective on this great experience.

Ray’s said a number of times that 360iDev is one of his favorite iOS conferences — and I’d have to agree. If you’re looking for more hands-on tutorials, check out RWDevCon which runs April 5–7, 2018 in Washington D.C.; RWDevCon and 360iDev are both at the top of my own personal list of conferences.

Did you attend 360iDev this year? Will you attend next year? Will you step up and submit a talk of your own? Let us know in the forum discussion below!

Photo Credits: Fuad Kamal.

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welovetheherb · 7 years

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Why marijuana stocks are losing steam

New Post has been published on https://theherbnews.com/why-marijuana-stocks-are-losing-steam.html

Why marijuana stocks are losing steam

A one-month selloff in marijuana stocks appeared to ease by week’s finish, however traders within the rising sector have seen the shares drop sharply from their current highs.

As of Thursday, many licensed producers had been down about 30 per cent since mid-April, when the federal government unveiled its plan for a regulation to allow the authorized use of leisure cannabis. “That catalyst is behind you and people are realizing that there’s a year to go” earlier than it turns into clear how and the place non-medical cannabis can be bought,” Beacon Securities Vahan Ajamian advised BNN in an interview.

Provinces are wrestling with find out how to regulate gross sales. Quebec public well being minister, Lucie Charlebois, advised BNN that the Liberal authorities is aware of warnings from the province’s psychiatrists that permitting gross sales to folks as younger as 18 might threaten public well being.

Marijuana would not belong in liquor shops: Quebec’s public well being minister

Quebec is planning to desk a marijuana invoice this fall in response to Ottawa’s deadline to legalize leisure marijuana by July 1, 2018. Lucie Charlebois, Quebec’s public well being minister, discusses the issues and prices that the province anticipates.

As in different jurisdictions, the Quebec authorities should bear in mind a well-established community of unlawful gross sales. “The bikers oversee an efficient system with regulated prices, a near limitless supply of weed, and distribution channels that reach into every corner of the province,” a one-time grower for the Hells Angels advised the Montreal Gazette newspaper. “Everybody knows a dealer they can text, every dealer has a supplier, and every supplier has a network of grow operations they can tap into. Most people can have weed delivered to their house within minutes of sending a text message. That’s what the government is competing with.”

“For better or worse, you need regulatory action to make the market go up or down,” Khurram Malik, head of analysis and accomplice at Jacob Capital Management, advised BNN on Monday.

Cannabis sector at present lacks a ‘catalyst’: Jacob Capital Management

Khurram Malik, head of analysis and accomplice at Jacob Capital Management, says that to get the marijuana sector as an entire going, the provinces and federal authorities want to supply extra readability on what they are trying to do concerning the leisure market.

Weed stocks dropped as much as eight per cent on April 13 because the Liberals adopted what was seen by some as a sombre and punitive tone in selling their plan. “It is not our intent to promote the use of this drug,” stated Bill Blair, the MP and former Toronto police chief who travelled the nation gauging attitudes.

Investors have reduce the valuation they’re keen to connect to the businesses, in response to Echelon Wealth Partners analyst Russell Stanley. “I think it’s multiple compression,” he stated in an interview. Stanley calculates that the market is now paying simply seven occasions estimated EBITDA in 2019, down from 11 occasions a number of months in the past.

“All of these companies are starting to see some of the air coming out of them,” Purpose Investments CEO Som Seif advised BNN’s Paul Bagnell on Friday.

There’s been a ‘fair amount of mania’ in marijuana stocks: Som Seif

Som Seif, CEO of Purpose Investments, spoke to BNN’s Paul Bagnell in regards to the “mania” seen in lots of marijuana stocks lately and why that could be.

Meanwhile a flurry of recent listings implies that there are merely extra names competing for investor money. “A year ago, there were just five or six public companies,” Ajamian stated. “Now’s there’s 15 or 20.”

Shares in trade big Canopy Growth (WEED.TO) traded Friday at $7.92 for a market capitalization of $1.Three-billion. That was sharply larger than $6.82 on Tuesday, however down from greater than $10 in April and nearly $18 in November 2016.

Shares in Aphria (APH.TO) modified palms at $5.25 for a market cap $716-million. That was nicely up from $four.71 on Tuesday, however down from greater than $eight in April.

Newcomer Cannabis Wheaton Income Fund (CBW.TO) scrapped a deal to lift $80-million by way of Eight Capital (previously Dundee Securities) and Canaccord Genuity (CF.TO). Investors had been believed to have balked at information that staff on the two brokers owned nearly 10 per cent of the corporate, acquired for pennies per share. Cannabis Wheaton had proposed promoting shares, with a warrant connected, at $1.15.

Wheaton has since hired Mackie Research Capital to lift up $50 million as an alternative.

Its inventory traded Friday at $1.04, down from $1.60 in early May.

One Bay Street observer stated the Wheaton turmoil “infected the whole sector.”

This week’s malaise dragged down the brand new Horizons Medical Marijuana Life Sciences ETF (HMMJ.TO), which slumped to a brand new closing low of $eight.28 on Tuesday, down from greater than $11.80 after it started buying and selling in April. By Friday it had recovered to $eight.60.

“The whole space is being hammered so you’re either in it for the long haul or you’re not in it at all,” Mark Noble, senior vice chairman and head of gross sales technique at Horizons ETF Management told BNN.

The Canadian cannabis stocks, together with co-lead underwriters GMP Capital (GMP.TO) and Clarus Securities, attracted unwelcome international consideration on Wednesday. Shares in huge grower MedReleaf (LEAF.TO) slid greater than 20 per cent from their $9.50 providing value in a high-profile preliminary public providing to shut at $7.40.

The MedReleaf inventory situation raised $100-million, with $20-million going to promoting shareholders. The firm is a major trade participant. In a presentation to traders, it claimed a 19 per cent share of the Canadian medical market in This fall of final 12 months. MedReleaf additionally stated that cannabis oils – most well-liked by medical customers who don’t wish to smoke – accounted for greater than 44 per cent of the market in the identical three months.

By Friday the inventory had rallied above $9 for a market cap north of $820-million.

MedReleaf chief govt Neil Closner stated in an interview that the IPO was caught up within the normal cannabis selloff. “We have not heard that it was anything specific to the company.” In fact, he said, a number of purchasers of the IPO bought more shares “as things looked a little silly.”

MedReleaf IPO flop attracts worldwide consideration

Marijuana firm MedReleaf Corp fell 22 per cent after its IPO Wednesday, elevating questions in regards to the challenges dealing with the pot trade. BNN’s Andrew Bell has extra.

For now, traders are shopping for again into the sector with a few of them hoping that precise shortages of cannabis will develop, particularly when authorized pot goes on sale.

The federal authorities is eager to encourage new growers nevertheless it’s troublesome and costly to get a allow to provide and to arrange or develop a develop operation.

Jacob Capital Management’s Malik advised BNN there’s an extended solution to go from getting a allow to truly harvesting inexperienced bushels. “If 40 licences were issued tomorrow, you have to remember one thing: it’ll take them a least a year to get decent production figured out. And it’ll take them a year beyond that to grow the full capacity.”

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lovelyfantasticfart · 4 years

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mikemortgage · 6 years

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NAFTA deal unlikely this week, sources say, raising fears of Trump tariffs

NAFTA talks are picking up again but a deal is unlikely to be reached this week, four people familiar with discussions said — increasing the odds the latest deadline will be missed amid Donald Trump’s threat to freeze Canada out.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke briefly to reporters in Washington Wednesday morning before entering a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, saying staff has been hard at work ahead of their first in-person session in eight days. The two countries remain at odds on core issues, including dairy and dispute panels.

A deal is unlikely this week without major movement, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity as negotiations continue. The talks could extend into next week, and several deadlines have been missed so far. A Canadian official had said Thursday was the likely deadline to reach a deal in order to convert it to legal text by the end of the month.

Trudeau under growing pressure at home to get NAFTA deal done

The countries had been pressuring each other on the eve of the meeting. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a key Republican lawmaker, warned in a statement Tuesday that congressional patience with Canada was wearing thin. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at the same time, continues to say he would rather see no deal than be forced to accept a bad one.

“We’ve been very clear that we’re interested in what could be a good deal for Canada, but we’re going to need to see a certain amount of movement in order to get there and that’s certainly what we’re hoping for,” Trudeau told reporters Wednesday in Ottawa.

The U.S. reached a preliminary deal with Mexico in August. Barring an accord with Canada, Trump has threatened to proceed with only his southern neighbour, though Scalise stopped short of saying Congress would go along with that.

“It is growing increasingly unlikely that you can get text to the Congress by Sept. 30,” said Jennifer Hillman, a professor of law at Georgetown University and former general counsel to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It’s even more unlikely to proceed quickly with only Mexico, she said. “Canada does still have some leverage.”

Scalise, the House majority whip, said if Canada does not “cooperate” then Congress would “consider options about how best to move forward,” though he didn’t specify how.

“There is a growing frustration with many in Congress regarding Canada’s negotiating tactics,” Scalise said in the statement.

‘All Three Countries’

There have also been numerous calls in the U.S. to include Canada. In a joint letter dated Monday, three major U.S. business groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers — said it would be “unacceptable to sideline Canada,” the top buyer of U.S. goods. Prominent members of Congress have also said that Canada should be part of any new North American trade agreement.

“I think that if all three countries are in and all signed up, there’s a much higher likelihood this gets passed,” Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada under Barack Obama, said Tuesday on BNN Bloomberg television. There’s no sign a Mexico-only deal can be passed by Congress, he said, while shrugging off the significance of Scalise’s statement. “I think Steve Scalise is carrying water for USTR,” he said.

Panels, Tariffs

Canadian officials are warning that they’re prepared to see the next deadline pass if they don’t get an agreement they can live with, according to two people familiar with the talks. The Canadians need effective dispute settlement provisions in anti-dumping cases, and certainty to avoid misuse of national security investigations, under which Trump has applied tariffs, one of the people said.

Sticking points in talks include dairy, where the U.S., facing a supply glut, is seeking a bigger cut of Canada’s protected market. In exchange, Canada is hoping to preserve some form of anti-dumping panels contained in Chapter 19 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and an exemption for Canadian cultural industries.

Other American demands include longer intellectual property and pharmaceutical patent protection and a higher threshold for duty-free shipments across the U.S.-Canada border, none of which the Canadians have signalled are deal-breakers.

It’s unclear what will happen if it becomes impossible to publish text of a deal by Sept. 30. The countries could extend talks, but that means Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who takes office Dec. 1 — will have to be the one to sign the new agreement.

‘Always Tough’

Trump could try to proceed with Mexico only, but will face blowback from Congress, and the actual U.S.-Mexico agreement would probably require further changes, Hillman said, because it’s written in a way — for example, a requirement that 75 per cent of auto content be sourced within the trade pact’s member nations — that appears to presume Canadian involvement. “You wouldn’t want to leave that number at 75 per cent if Canada is not included,” because automakers couldn’t meet it, she added.

Trump, meanwhile, took aim at the Canadians again on Tuesday. “Canada has taken advantage of our country for a long time,” he said. “They are in a position that is not a good position for Canada.”

The president has threatened auto tariffs on the Trudeau government if it balks at a deal. Finally, Trump could use another pressure tactic: give six months’ notice of quitting the existing NAFTA. Heyman said he was concerned that could happen.

Doing so “could then scramble a lot of things up,” he said. In that case, and others, Congress will be roped in. “These last few days are always tough.”

Bloomberg.com

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years

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What’s The Fuss About Home Capital?

TorontoRealtyBlog

As this story continues to develop, I can’t help but think: there’s no real story here.

I mean, there is a story: that Home Capital’s stock plummeted, and there was a run on their deposits.

But what’s the story behind that? Nobody knows. Yet.

Let’s look at what we know so far, what questions need answering, and then delve off into conspiracy theories…

All too often in society today, people don’t want to know the story behind the story.

They want a headline.

They want an immediate conclusion.

And if the opportunity arises to look further, they turn their attention to a shinier object.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake. that President Donald Trump (that still sounds weird…) were to say, “Barack Obama tapped my phones. This is Nixon/Watergate. He’s a bad (sick) guy.”

I think roughly 50% of America will take that as given, and require absolutely, positively, no follow-up.

A lot of people, even if offered clarification, wouldn’t be interested!

I believe this is based on a combination of things, ranging from our shortened attention spans, to the sheer amount of people, places, and things vying for our attention, to the immediacy we’ve grown accustomed to as technology advances.

So when the story about Home Trust broke last week, and continued into this week, I wasn’t surprised when nobody really asked “what’s happening, and why.”

We know what happened.

That’s the easy part.

But what really happened, and why did it happen? That’s what I want to get to today.

First, perhaps, a recap.

Back in 2015, Home Trust suspended relationships with forty-five mortgage brokers, now dubbed “the home-trust forty-five,” amid claims of fraudulent mortgage applications. Of the 45, 18 were independent, and the other 27 were from two different brokerages.

After the discovery of this fraud, Home Trust restricted their lending practices, increased scrutiny and underwriting practices, and tightened the reigns on their lending.

But nothing really happened of consequence until last week, when the Ontario Securities Commission announced they would be investigating how the mortgage fraud was reported (or not…) to their investors.

News of the investigation caused investors to withdraw their deposits, and the stock price of Home Capital Group (the holding company) began to plummet.

These “investors,” keep in mind, are not you and I.

This is the part of the story (one of many) that the media isn’t telling.

These are institutional investors, hedge funds, and all-purpose big-dogs.

Just in their high-interest savings account alone, investors withdrew approximately $1.09 Billion of the $1.41 Billion in holdings, in the space of one week.

That is the story, in a nutshell.

But since this story broke, the speculation has run absolutely wild!

It’s a classic example of mania, exacerbated by the combination of round-the-clock media coverage, and today’s society’s penchant for careless and wild speculation.

The real estate bears are coming out in full force, saying, “This is it! The crash is coming!”

BNN, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg and the like simply can’t get enough of this.

And in my humble opinion, and feel free to tell me if I’m wrong, this is merely a stock market story, and has little, if anything, to do with real estate.

So there. Now take your shots.

Much of the general public, for oh-so-long, has wanted to see the Canadian real estate market, most notably Toronto, crash.

Even though many of those folks own houses, they still want to see a “cooling” or a “drop” of some sort.

So when the story about Home Capital first broke, it didn’t take long for people to make the connection that they so desire, and suggest that a run on Home Capital’s deposits, and a crash in their stock price, would lead to a real estate Armageddon.

But who are Home Capital Group, and Home Trust?

Home Trust is an alternative lender, and although the uninformed, bitter, bearish public wants to assume that means some sort of loan-shark, or high-risk institution, they are not. They are an “alternative” lender, which by definition means an alternative to the Big-5 banks, who have different lending practices.

The Bank Act of Canada, which was last amended in December of 2016, restricts how the Big-5 banks can operate, and how they can lend.

But what if you’re self-employed, or looking for a stated-income mortgage, or you have a large down payment but have bad credit?

“Should” you be able to get a mortgage?

The bears, and the fiscally conservative-and-afraid would suggest “no,” but the free markets throughout the globe’s most prosperous nations would suggest otherwise.

There is a need for alternative lenders in Canada, and a big one!

Home Trust is the largest alternative lender, representing about 1% of all mortgages in the country.

The changes to the Bank Act in 2016 left a huge void, and left many Canadian consumers high and dry.

Home Trust has filled that void, and they’ve been busier than ever before.

They are the oldest alternative lender in Canada, the most successful, and some, perhaps naively, would suggest they are too big to fail. They have weathered many storms before this one.

On Monday, as this story was still developing, it was announced that the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) was extending a $2 Billion line of credit to Home Capital, at a 10% interest rate, with 2.5% rate on undrawn amounts (which of course caused more deposit withdraws, and the stock to dive further).

This makes little sense, considering Home Trust’s mortgage book contains primarily loans in the 5% range.

Lending out money at 5%, that you’ve borrowed at over 10%, doesn’t make financial sense.

So what’s the real story here? Because this can’t be it.

There’s so much uncertainty, so many unanswered questions, and so much speculation, that as I said – there really isn’t a true story here.

And while I was a huge fan of the “X-Files” growing up, and I did just watch “J.F.K.” on the weekend, I want to ask a few questions, and pose a few hypotheticals, just to let the conspiracy folks run wild.

First and foremost, I find it interesting that the entity that bailed out Home Trust – the Healthcare of Ontario Pension plan, has a CEO, Jim Keohane, that holds a seat on Home Capital’s board.

Conflict of interest? Yeah, I think so.

Mr. Keohane said he recused himself from discussions with the lender last week, and stepped away from the board.

Said Mr. Keohane:

“With the possibility of us getting involved with a deal with Home, clearly that changes the business relationship between HOOPP and Home. It’s obvious a conflict exists there.”

Home Capital’s Chairman, Kevin Smith, was also sitting on the board of HOOPP.

Now I work in a very different world from these folks, and I have no idea how corporate finance works. This might be very common, and perhaps deals between massive corporations, who have many executives holding seats on other corporations boards, are quite common.

But it bears mention, just because of all the speculation about Home Capital’s future.

The conspiracy theorists are already asking, “Was this the best deal available for Home Capital?”

Maybe. Maybe not.

We’ll truly never know.

But you have to ask yourself: why would HOOPP provide $2 Billion in loans to a company that the knew were going to fail?

Again, the risk of sounding naive, I don’t think the folks running HOOPP got to where they are today by extending credit to companies whose imminent demise they saw coming.

I believe that Home Capital is too big to fail, and HOOPP sees this.

It’s a great deal for HOOPP, nobody is denying that. This loan is secured against mortgages.

But does anybody find the timing of all this a little bit coincidental?

Not to sound like Fox Mulder, trying to convince Dana Scully about Area 51 here, but why did this happen a week after the Liberals’ latest attempt to “cool the housing market?”

Think about it.

For the better part of a decade, the CMHC and the Bank of Canada have been undertaking measures to cool the Canadian housing market.

And nothing has worked.

They’ve done away with 40-year amortizations and 107% financing.

They’ve increased minimum down payment requirements, multiple times, at multiple price thresholds.

They’ve tightened restrictions on investment properties.

They’ve increased CMHC premiums.

They’ve increased qualification standards.

They’ve spent almost ten years reigning in lenders, and tightening lending practices.

And yet nothing they have done, has cooled the market.

So you’re telling me that two weeks after “the big three” in Bill Morneau, Charles Sousa, and John Tory, met to discuss the red-hot housing market, and one week after the Liberals announced their stillborn 16-point plan to create a “fair” housing market, suddenly Home Capital’s stock plummets and their deposits are depleted?

Something is missing here, folks

And that is the story behind the story.

Those investors that withdrew deposits last week know something that the rest of us don’t. Exactly what they knew, has yet to come to light.

This is why I said at the onset that there is “no story.”

Other than a stock dropping, and a run on deposits, there’s simply no story, because there’s no information.

There’s just wild speculation, and round-the-clock coverage on BNN.

And even if we started to play the “what would happen if Home Trust failed” game, would the bears still be calling for the market to crash?

Make no mistake, Home Trust has a “good book” on their hands. Their book of loans is great, it has a high rate of return, and it would be hugely in demand.

On Tuesday, Andrew Moor, the CEO of Equitable Bank (one of Home Trust’s competitors) said that he was “not interested” in Home Trust’s book of mortgages. Well what the hell is he going to say? “We hope they fail so we can pick up their massive book of high-interest mortgages?”

This is the story that’s being created out there, folks. When you ask somebody a question they can’t provide the real answer to, and they say the opposite of what they would otherwise say, can you really draw conclusions from that?

If Home Trust went under, the other alternative lenders would be lined up to buy their book of business.

However, and I’m now into the “wild speculation” department, if Home Trust went under, I think the government would step in and allow the Big-5 banks some leeway with lending regulations, so that they could take on the $16 Billion in mortgages that Home Trust currently has.

Don’t forget, the Big-5 banks used to be in this lending space.

It was through government regulation that they were forced out, which created a need for alternative lenders like Home Trust in the first place.

And I’m sure if the Big-5 had their druther, they’d be lending in the alternative space, where the returns are much higher.

Now it’s important here, once again, to remember that “alternative” is not a scary word.

These returns are high, but these are not high-ratio, they are not sub-prime, and they are not dangerous.

This is not USA, circa 2008.

This is about liquidity, not delinquency.

And it’s becoming increasingly popular to draw an exceptionally inaccurate connection between “the US banking crisis” and “Home Trust.”

One scandal/crisis/story does not equal another, automatically, because you want it to.

And the more that is written on Home Trust and Home Capital Group, the more speculation that enters the media (especially social media), the more the real estate bears and/or the uninformed masses are creating a connection where there isn’t one.

So for all the folks that want a housing crash, or decline, or drop, or cooling, or leveling off – this isn’t it.

Call me a real estate cheerleader. Call me an eternal optimist.

But until we know why investors pulled their deposits from Home Capital Group, there’s no story here.

I haven’t had a single buyer or seller client ask me about this, and in the media interviews I’ve done so far this week, all the columnists and interviewers have agreed with me.

The real estate market in Toronto may, in fact, one day, decline.

But that day isn’t today.

And as much as you want it to be, and as much as you want to use Home Capital as the catalyst, that day won’t be tomorrow either…

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