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Brad Brain Financial Planning Inc.

Who We Are

What We Believe

Manulife Securities

The Brad Brain Charitable Foundation

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" To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insight, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework"

- Warren Buffett

About Us

What We Believe

We offer the following products through Manulife Securities Incorporated, and Brad Brain Financial Planning Inc.:

Investments, TFSAs, RRSPs, RESPs & RDSPs

* Offered through Manulife Securities Incorporated.

- Mutual Funds                 

- Stocks and Bonds

- Flow through Limited Partnerships

- High interest Savings Accounts

- GIC's

- Exchange Traded Funds

Life & Living Benefit Insurance

* Offered through Brad Brain Financial Planning Inc.

- We offer a wide range of term, whole, universal life, and long term care products to suit your specific insurance needs

- We offer disability insurance and critical illness insurance to protect you from the financial repercussions of accident or illness

- We develop group insurance and benefit plans for employers

- We offer a selection of health insurance coverage for those without employer group plans

- Travel Insurance that you can buy online

Education, Tax and Estate Planning

* Offered through Manulife Securities Incorporated.

- We utilize Registered Education Savings Plans and in trust accounts for your children and grandchildren

- We offer tax planning to help you keep more of what you make

- We offer estate planning to ensure that your estate is distributed in the way that you want with the least amount of expense and delay

What We Believe

There are many theories on how to create and preserve wealth. Some of these theories can be quite effective. At lease for a while. But when it comes right down to it, there is only one methodology that we have full faith in – Value Investing.

“To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insight, or insider information. What’s required is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions, and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.”  

                                                                              -Warren Buffett

“Rule No.1: Never lose money.  Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”                                                                                                                                 -Warren Buffett

Choose the right heroes!

Warren Buffett is the richest person in the world.  He didn’t acquire his wealth by gambling on some long-shot ideas, or by exploiting some third-world labour force, or by manipulating some tax-loopholes.  In fact, he may very well be the most respected, most honest, most ethical capitalist that has ever lived. He’s also made more people millionaires, and billionaires, than anyone else on the planet.

From 1965 to 2004 the Standard and Poor's 500 Index compounded at an average annual rate of 10.4%. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway compounded at an average annual rate of 21.9%, with only one down year. Clearly, outperforming the benchmark by 11.5% over an extended period of time is impressive, but to truly put the magnitude of this feat into perspective consider this: during this time the total returns of the S&P 500 was 5,318%. Berkshire Hathaway’s total return was an astronomical 286,865%.

Buffett’s mentor was a man named Benjamin Graham. Graham developed an investment philosophy designed to shield investors from substantial error and teach them to develop long-term investment strategies. Graham’s book “The Intelligent Investor” outlines these timeless principles, which are just as real and relevant today as when they were first published in 1949. Buffett calls the "Intelligent Investor “by far the best book on investing ever written.”

Value Investing Defined

In simple terms, value investing involves determining the intrinsic value of an enterprise, and then buying the investment at a discount to its true net worth. We are looking for good businesses at good prices, and we are not willing to compromise on either aspect. From this simple definition several principles arise:

1. Own Great Business

If a business is doing well and is managed by people with integrity, intelligence, and energy, it’s inherent value will ultimately be reflected in its share price.

2. Build Concentrated Portfolios

Many investors are over-diversified. This leads to a dilution of the quality of investments, with too much capital tied up in poor investments and not enough in the really good ones. We prefer to find a fewer number of great investment ideas and to take meaningful positions rather than resorting to our second or third best ideas. Approximately 25 businesses are adequate to give diversification to a properly constructed portfolio. Adding more than that does not materially increase the benefits of diversification, but it does increase the detrimental dilution factor.

3. Invest in What You Know

Some investors will make an investment without really understanding why they would want to invest in a business, or even just what it is that they are investing into in the first place. This is a folly. We want to know a business inside and out. It is knowledge that allows us to avoid risk.

4. Ignore the Stock Market

Investment decisions should reflect an opinion of the long-term prospects for a business, not the short-term prospects for the stock market. The stock market is a tool that can be used for our advantage, it is not the arbitrator of our client’s well being. As Buffet says, “As far as I am concerned, the stock market doesn’t exist. It is only there as a reference to see if anyone is offering to do anything foolish.”

5. Employ a Margin of Safety

 The key to successful investing is the purchase of shares in good businesses when market prices are at a large discount to underlying business values for any variety of reasons. As Peter Cundhill says, “I am looking to buy a dollar for fifty cents.”

Warren Buffett made reference to this in his 1989 annual report, calling it a “double dip”. This visual reference shows how buying a stock below its intrinsic value can have two benefits. (1) the long term gains in intrinsic value that the companies have achieved; (2) the additional gains as the market corrected the prices of these companies, raising their valuations in relation to those of the average business

6. Be Patient

Many of history’s great investors have suggested that the key to their success lay not in what they did, but rather in what they did not do. They did not yield to their emotions or to the pressure to follow the crowd. Instead, they focused on the business they owned and watched as their value compounded over time.

Implementation

There are different ways that we can implement these ideas. We are always on the lookout for good ideas ourselves. We also team up with other like minded individuals, such as Charles Brandes with Brandes Investment Partners, Ned Goodman with Dynamic Mutual Funds, and Peter Cundill with Mackenzie Financial.

Brad Brain Financial Planning Inc.

Manulife Securities Incorporated

Suite 101 9705 100 Ave

Fort St. John, BC V1J 1Y2

Phone: (250) 785-1655 Fax: (250) 785-1650

Email: Brad Brain CFP, R.F.P., CLU, Ch.F.C., FCSI

Senior Financial Advisor

Violet Chase

Executive Administrator

Manulife Securities Disclaimers