Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Gold Is A Bet On Irresponsibility The fundamental reason for owning gold is based on a long term reality. Governments have historically printed money to support programs they don’t have the resources to pay for. The bet you are making owning gold, is that these players will continue to act irresponsibility and power gold’s rise - as in the past. The purchasin...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Newly Minted Canadians Anytime I attend a function with newly minted Canadians, I am always fascinated by the amazing number who arrived here penniless and with few natural advantages. Yet through a combination of hard-work and financial discipline, they eventually manage to buy a home and help their kids pay for their education. In spite of all the doom and...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - The Rise of Cyber Crime The losses associated with cyber crime involve more than just stolen money. It also includes damage and destruction of data, lost productivity, stealing intellectual property, theft of personal and financial information, business disruption, and the restoration of hacked data systems. The magnitude of cybercrime is stunning. Fast forwa...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Pharma Is On A Buying Spree The official length of a standard drug patent is 20 years from the date the application is filed. However, because drug companies file patents early in the discovery phase, clinical testing and government approval often eat up 1/2 of the patent protection before the drug even hits the market and starts making money. Between now and...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Educations New Reality The sign of a healthy society is recognizing a mistake, then doing a course correction and getting it right on the second attempt. For years bright young people were mesmerized by the cache of getting an advanced degree requiring 4 to 8 years of hard study to attain. The end result often left them hopelessly in debt, with a worthless sh...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Political Gridlock Is A Good Thing The focus has been on right wing extremists in the the Republican Party. Very little scrutiny has been focussed on the same ideological swing happening with the Democrats. The only difference, is Democrats are being overwhelmed by radicals on the left. The mid term elections happening two months from now in the US, currently...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Mid Cap Are The Growth Bargains Investors assume the largest companies are the strongest growers….but the historical record says otherwise. Over the last 35 years, US companies just below the top 500 in market value, grew operating cash flow by 9% per year versus 6.5% for the big guys. These smaller companies compounded profits at twice the rate over 35 years...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Nuclear Fuel Scarcity Investors are very excited about the development and buildout of a whole new generation of nuclear reactors. But very few have asked the critical question, “Where are all these reactors going to get the fuel needed to run them?” Today's fleet is powered by uranium enriched to about 5%. The next generation of small modular reactors runs o...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Norway’s Wealth Tax Because of Norway’s vast oil reserves, the country has been able to sock away 2.2 trillion dollars US in the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. With only 5.6 million residents, the countries cash pile works out to $390,000 US per person. Yet in spite of Norway’s enviable financial position, they decided to add a wealth tax onto an alre...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Canada’s Nuclear Development When nuclear power is mentioned, Canada gets left out of the discussion. People forget that we have 3 operating reactors in Ontario providing 1/2 of the province’s electricity and a fourth one in New Brunswick. Cameco, a Canadian miner, is the largest publicly traded uranium producer in the world. Also Cameco and Brookfield Renewa...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Space Cargo The space economy involves more than just putting satellites in orbit. It also includes data centres, manufacturing in zero gravity, defence systems, solar arrays and further out - interplanetary travel and resource mining. The key to this future involves driving launch costs down so getting material into space becomes economic. And drop they have...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - AI Predictions Predictions of how Artificial Intelligence will affect the economy are all over the map. The doomers expect an enormous displacement of humans by machines, high unemployment and a nasty recession. The optimists think we will experience large increases in productivity, rising wages and full employment. So far, investors have been betting on the...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Costs Collecting Tax You don’t think much about it, but some countries are much more efficient at collecting tax dollars from their businesses and citizens than others. For example, the Government of Canada spends $0.80 to $1.00 to collect $100 in taxes. In most European countries, tax authorities payout between 70 cents and a dollar for every $100 dollars in...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Hormuz Oil Shipments Because 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, it was widely assumed, crude prices would spike to $200 per barrel if the Iran conflict lasted for more than 90 days. Fast forward 6 months. Oil is at $84 and the war shows no sign of ending. What happened? No one thought tankers would turn off their tracking devices and...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Tax Conspiracies While recently enjoying a cup of coffee with a neighbour, he mentioned a strange idea I thought had been discredited years ago. It involves a conspiracy theory that keeps resurrecting itself on the internet. This fairy tale says that any government law directing you to pay income tax is illegal, and thus, you need not comply. Unfortunately ta...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Liberal vs Conservatives In 1811, the French diplomat, Joseph de Maistre, observed that every nation has the government it deserves. In a democracy our political choices reflect the moral and intellectual preferences of the voters who elect them. The issue for investors is emotional. If the party, or parties, they didn’t vote for, attain power, it is common f...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Asymmetric Warfare The strategies on how wars are fought has been turned on its head the last couple of years. In the past, the country with the most tanks, ships and planes would overwhelm the enemy with superior firepower. Currently, small countries with very limited resources, have been able to stalemate their bigger adversaries using drones and other low...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Gold Miner Profits Now that gold bullion has pulled back 20% from its January highs of $5500 US, many investors have lost interest and moved on. Yet even at the current price of $4,400 US per ounce, profits for miners of the yellow metal are still enormous. The sector is printing cash at a rate not seen in decades. In fact, the gold miners are churning out th...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Wealth & IQ A high IQ does not make you a great investor. A good example is Mensa. They are an exclusive society for individuals scoring in the top 2% on IQ tests. They also run their own investment club. A 15-year study, between 1986–2001, found that the Mensa investment club generated a measly 2.5% annualized return. This lagged significantly behind the S&P...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Fees & Performance What is the best predictor of future fund performance? Some think it is past performance. But research shows that a fund with a 5 star rating, is very unlikely to repeat it going forward. The best indicator of future performance is the funds fee structure. Kiplinger did a study of 1100 mutual funds. They divided them into two baskets. The h...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - EV’s & Oil Consumption Electric vehicles are taking a small but growing bite out of global oil consumption. EV’s saved us from using about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2025. That is up from 400,000 barrels per day in 2000. Over the next decade, this is expected to grow 5 fold to 10,000,000 barrels per day. This conversion will reduce global oil deman...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Experts & Oil Prices On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched massive air and missile strikes against military targets and government compounds in Iran. Oil immediately spiked to $110 US per barrel, and it was feared, it would quickly go to $200 per barrel unless the fighting ended soon. Well here we are 6 months later, the conflict hasn’t...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - The Baby Boomer Sell Off Baby boomers started retiring a decade and a half ago. Ever since, there have been dire warnings of a pending stock market collapse as boomers sell off investments to support their retirement lifestyle. Though prophecies of doom continue, markets haven’t cooperated. Boomers have a high percentage of their portfolios in stocks. Yet ins...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Telco Threats Canadian telecommunication stocks used to be considered top choices for risk adverse, income investors. Those glory days are long behind them. Over the last 5 years, BCE and Telus are down 50% and Rogers has lost a third of its value. Government rules have made it harder to be profitable, and the latest technology threat is satellites. The newes...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Time & Compounding Compounding has been described as the 8th wonder of the world. Yet few people understand the power of compounding, and how using it, can turn a little bit of regular savings into a whole lot over time. Take for example a baby who starts investing from birth. Imagine this kid putting a little bit every day into an investment growing 10% annu...