u/Reddit_Only_4494

My experience Tuesday. Was a very busy branch with 2 active tellers and at least 15 people in line. Kids running about screaming. Customers complaining under their breath looking pissy while waiting. The whole bit.

I (56 and retired) am not bothered by the line, I have nothing better to do. I'm there to deposit some USD I had on hand after a vacation. Nice and simple. Finally gets to my turn and the very young looking teller is very kind. Starts with the small talk which is all polite...asking if I am back from vacation....where I went....and so on. While this is going on, a person who I assume is training her or reviewing performance, is standing behind within earshot.

Then the sell start....she says I qualify for overdraft protection....I say pass. She asks the question "do you have plans for the money in your account"? I say "not really", then goes with the "would you like it to grow"? I just responded with a nod saying "I'm all set up, thanks". She finished the transaction and ended with a good 30 seconds talking about how I may receive a survey and it would "really help her out" if I left a positive review.

Having done some sales in my (past) career, it is clear this person either was, or felt that she was, under heavy pressure to get the sale done. Even down to the bad open ended questioning tactics she was surely trained on. All the while.....feeling the harsh environment that existed at the branch thanks to the extra people in line.

All this to say.....to someone working at TD.....I am a customer with a "High Value Client Relationship Manager" in Direct Investing and a couple of bucks in my accounts....that says too you......your efforts on sales are NOT frowned upon by me. I know it is your job....and you are doing it to the best of your ability. Do what is required and if you get the occasional gruff with grey hair giving short responses to your attempts......just know that everyone is expected to do their job. I don't blame you for it.

I might get flagged for comments on stakes or bankroll....but that is not my intention at all.

I'll play an occasional $5 PLO ($500 buy in max). Despite the usual slot machine like players that go with any hand, which is to be expected....something else always hit me as strange.

Quite a few players like going all in then buying back in short. And they do it a lot. All in, lose, call chips for $200, and repeat. Plenty of cash in their pocket, but only buying like $100 - $300 at a time when they could go for $500.

Is there a strategy that I am missing? While true, a person can only lose what is on the table....the reverse is true that one can only win a multiple of what they have on the table. I have seen it a few times....one of those fresh $200 rebuys ends up with a great hand that even improves to the nuts....and they only have $200 to work with for their hand while the extra $300 to fully buy in sits in cash in their pocket.

Is there a strategy that I am missing? Again....it isn't judgement....but just an attempt to understand the benefit of buying short other than limiting losses even though the short buys are coming from a pocket full of cash.

Got to thinking the other day about the huge increase of self employed people in Canada over the past 5 or so years.

It's all about the foreign business apps that operate in Canada and created self employed gig workers. Door Dash. Skip. Uber. et al.

Think about it. Every Uber on the road, every Skip or Door Dash person with a bag is a "self employed" person as far as the CRA is concerned.

When someone is T-slip employed....taxes are fairly simple and automatic. Employers file their T4's, withhold tax & CPP/EI and remint to the Government and all the numbers should line up.

Foreign delivery apps don't file T-Slips with the CRA. They provide their drivers with "income summaries" but no tax is withheld. It is up to the taxpayer to property file their income and pay their taxes as a "self employed" taxpayer.

Pre-delivery apps.....self employed people were usually some sort of professional operating between sole proprietorship and employee. Savvy in the ways of the CRA.

Now go back to the delivery drivers/Ubers seen on the road. Do the people carrying those delivery bags look to be tax savvy professionals?

Even if the average driver stays under the $30K limit for GST collection....they are still supposed to file. Just imagine the questions, the late filing, the penalties, the this and that in what would be involved in proper tax filing for gig workers with income that is effectively self reported.....if reported at all. The CRA has no way to verify those tax returns automatically as no T-Slip exists from the employer to compare to the taxpayer's filing.

Just feels like everything around gig workers would have to be looked at by "someone" as opposed to the computers just spitting it completed returns.

I'm convinced that the increase in gig workers like this is the reason for a good part of the current CRA issues....but no one says it. Why?

A half rhetorical question.....but something that popped into my head.

ETF's are all, and their base, backed by positions in equities. Somewhere in a blended ETF of an ETF is an ETF that holds actual positions in stock.

ETF's have become extremely popular, to the point of where institution purchasing COULD be limited by the number of actual stocks that are out on the market. Why the limit? Though it doesn't feel like it....there are a finite number of shares for a company for trading. That number can increase or decrease based on splits or valuation adjustments.....but it is a finite number.

Could it be that ETF's in their insatiable need for delivering returns are driving up the price of equities because of demand? Suddenly.....the market is not driven exclusively by economic returns or even fear/greed. Could stock scarcity which is increasing value? Like a collectable. It is worth "something", but the price is higher because of scarcity & demand.

The movie "The Big Short" was on this weekend and it always makes me think of ETF's. Mortgage bonds were always backed by actual mortgages, which are finite...there are only so many, but then institutions started with CDO's building mortgage bonds by packaging other mortgage bonds which increased their leverage and gave the institution something to sell. Haven't ETF's done a similar thing with ETF's full of other ETF's? They ran out of stock to buy, or the stock has become expensive because of demand, so institutions had to build ETF's out of their own collection of ETF's to feed the desire?

I'm not chicken little-ing the market.....but when stock market highs don't match with long accepted economic factors from history......starts to make me wonder if demand for stock created by the hunger for ETF's and the subsequent institutional profit that comes from ETF's has created a scarcity in actual stock available to be traded. Since 80%+ of the market trading is institutional....is it possible that scarcity of stock suddenly becomes a factor in its price?