Tag Archives: shares

Checking the Current Real Time Price for an Equity Using BMO InvestorLine

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Sometimes you want to know exactly what shares are selling for– not some 20-minute delayed quote as reported on the TV or radio. You can check the price accurate to within less than one minute using your BMO InvestorLine account and the Equity and Option Order Entry Screen.

  1. Sign in to your BMO InvestorLine account.
    1. Go to BMO InvestorLine at: https://www.bmoinvestorline.com/
    2. To sign in to your BMO InvestorLine account/s:
    3. In the User ID or Account # field, type your account number or if you have grouped your accounts under one User ID, type your User ID.
    4. In the Password field, type your password.
    5. Click on the Go button.
  2. Under the Trading tab, click on Equities.
  3. In the Symbol field, type the trading symbol for the company you are interested in.
    For example, I typed: BNS
  4. Press the Enter key.On the right side of the screen, a small chart will display the current price and how much it is up or down since the open price.
    It will give the hour and minute of the last trade. (But not, unfortunately, the second.)
  5. You can update the price by clicking on the Refresh Quote link.
    You have to keep clicking it if you want to see the most recent price.For an actively traded stock like BNS, the price can flip around significantly several times a minute.
  6.  When you’re done, click on the Sign Out link.
  7. For higher security, also close your Browser session.

Clicking is a Pain, Doesn’t InvestorLine Stream the Quotes?

There are no “streaming” or automatically updated real-time quotes available at the regular trading level of InvestorLine account. (If you have a LOT of money at InvestorLine you may be upgraded to a higher level of service including streaming quotes. I doubt I will ever be at that level.)

Even though it only reports the Last Trade time to the nearest minute, you can get several quotes during that same minute by clicking on the Refresh Quote button.

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What do you use to look up real time stock prices? Please share your investing secrets and strategies with a comment.

Retirement Planning: Don’t Invest Your Pension Primarily in Stock in This

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Tempting though it may be, it’s an inherently risky move to invest most of your pension in the stock of the company for which you work. Here’s an explanation and an example to consider.

Don’t Keep the Bulk of Your Savings in Shares of the Company for Which You Work

There may be some comfort in investing in your own company. You may have pride in your employer and in your own work. You may feel that you would “know” if there were accounting irregularities or any weakness that threatens the company. You may know your company has a long history of steady growth.

It’s a risky choice.

Having Too Many $$ in the Same Company is Risky

Many people who work in large Canadian companies are offered opportunities to invest directly in the company for which they work. Often, there is a work savings plan that allows employees to buy shares in the company without paying a trading commission. If the company has a defined contribution pension plan, and most now do, one of the investment choices is to buy stock in the company, often with no commissions charged. Depending on the type of employee rewards program, they may be granted SARs or RSUs where the award’s payout is based on the value of the stock on a certain day or during a certain period.

Now imagine where else these employees are putting their savings and retirement money? Chances are good that at least some of it is going into a stock market ETF or mutual fund that includes their own company!

Having so much of your personal monetary worth tied to one company is inherently risky.

Learn from the Disastrous Impact of Nortel’s Collapse on Its Employees’ Pensions

A relative of mine was once employed by Nortel Networks. Like many Nortel employees much of his pension was invested in shares in Nortel. After all, at that time, Nortel was a mini-Bell. It was a secure, stable, growing Canadian corporation. It was even viewed as being largely conservative.

This relative worked for a splinter group in Nortel that the company decided one day to sell off. Part of the terms of sale was that certain of the key employees, including my relative, would move to the new business. Another condition of the sale was that the employees of the new company had to sell off any holdings in Nortel, specifically the ones in their pension plan.

That forced change in pension investments saved my relative thousands of dollars. Because just after he sold, Nortel collapsed.

For those of you too young or otherwise new to the Nortel saga, here’s a quick review. Nortel was a subsidiary of Bell. According to the CBCNews article Key dates in Nortel Networks’ history in 1977 it incorporated. In July 2000, during the dotcom bubble, Nortel’s stock hit a high of $124.50 per share. In 2002, the share price had plunged to 67 cents. It never really recovered. In June 2009 Nortel was delisted from the TSX.

Virtually none of the Nortel employees saw this coming. The collapse was caused, it appears, by two major problems. One, the price of the shares skyrocketed on the same euphoria that swept all high tech companies in the late 1990s, now called the dotcom bubble. The price shot way above the realistic value of the assets and the production of the company. Two, there may have been some actual illegal activity on the part of Nortel management. That is still being decided in the courts. Either way, when the dotcom implosion occurred, Nortel was caught up in the tidal wave and left battered and broken on the beach.

Many Nortel employees lost their jobs. Many of them then realized in horror that their personal savings plans and their retirement plans had been heavily invested directly in Nortel stock. They had lost virtually everything, through no fault of their own, in less than a year. No one saw it coming. No one person could have stopped it.

Don’t let it happen to you. Stay diversified. Doesn’t let most of your worth become invested in only one asset no matter how safe and secure it seems.

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Did you ever review your personal investments and realize with a shock that you are over-invested in one company or in one sector? Were you able to fix the problem in time? Please share your experiences with a comment.