Episode 52: Types of Preferreds (The Protection That Ran Backwards)

Episode Summary During a long era of low interest rates, Canadian retail investors were sold a specific promise: a preferred share designed to protect them against rising interest rates. The product was fully disclosed, legal, and wildly popular. Then, interest rates fell instead. The very mechanism designed to protect investors reset their income downward, their share prices collapsed, and they experienced a crushing double blow of falling income and falling capital value simultaneously.

This episode untangles the four main varieties of preferred shares, takes apart the math of the infamous "rate-reset preferred," and delivers a vital lesson on why you must always ask what happens in the exact scenario you are no ...