Canada's ING Direct Orange Key Promotion

Hi Friends,

A while ago, I was searching for something else but accidentally came across a great promotion by ING Direct Canada, which is based on referring friends. With the program and with a little effort, you can collect a lot of cash just for referring someone. In brief, if you open an account (such as a no fee Chequing account) and deposit $100. Not only you will get a $25 bonus, but also your friend who referred you would get $25. The referral program, will allow you to earn up to $2000 in bonuses if you refer 50 friends. I have opened the account and there is absolutely no tricks or hidden fees. This is the way ING Direct wants to encourage people to use their great services.

I will explain the program in more details below:

The referral program is called ING Direct Orange Key program.

What is the ING Direct Orange Key program?

The ING Direct Orange Key program is a referral based program. When you sign up for the first time with ING Direct Canada, and deposit at least $100, you will be rewarded $25. To earn the bonus $25, you have to input a current Orange Key when you sign up.

Now the key to this program is the Orange Key you receive when you sign up with ING Direct.

What do I do with my Orange Key?

When you have your Orange Key, all that is left for you to do is to convince a friend to sign up with ING Direct Canada (which is not that hard to do at all) and give them your Orange Key. You have to be sure that your friend deposits at least $100, which they will likely do as it will earn them $25. Once they make the deposit, not only will they get $25, but you will as well.

How to earn $2000?

You will need 50 friends or family to sign up with ING Direct in order for you to earn $2000.

Here is the rundown of how it works:

• Refer 10 friends and family – get $25 x 10 + $50 bonus = 300
• Refer 20 friends and family – get $25 x 10 + $100 bonus = 350
• Refer 30 friends and family – get $25 x 10 + $150 bonus = 400
• Refer 40 friends and family – get $25 x 10 + $200 bonus = 450
• Refer 50 friends and family – get $25 x 10 + $250 bonus = 500

This makes the grand total $2000.

As you can see, with every 10 successful referrals, you earn an additional bonus which increases as you make your way to 50 referrals.

The family members can refer themselves and get $50/family for every account opened:

One effective way to get started with a good chunk of bonuses is that you open separate accounts for each member of the family. For example, if you are a family of 4, your family will immediately earn: $25 (1st account opening) + $50 (2nd account) + $50 (3rd account) + $50 (4th account) = $175

Plus, each of you stand the chance of earning $2000 in future.

I want to get started. What should I do?

1) Go to:

http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend/

2) Go to "open an account" at the right bottom of the page

3) Choose one the available accounts (I recommend either using one of the savings accounts (maybe the first one 1.5%) or even better the new no fee Chequing account)

4) Select Enroll then use the orange key: 35530019S1 (or the one on the main page of the blog)

5) Once you enter the information and set up the account, it will give you the instructions to mail a Cheque to yourself for $100.

6) Once the Cheque is cleared (in about 2-3 business days), you will already see the bonus $25 plus your own orange key.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Once you open your account, I can show you how to get more referrals. Feel free to drop a line.

One way to hedge your portfolio

Hi all,

There are many ways to hedge your portfolio against a market correction. However, there is one that I have discovered myself and has saved me during the correction times in 2010.

Before I start explaining about my method, let me review the most widely used methods and their drawbacks:

1) Buying puts: This method is useful if you buy the right put option (right strike price), at the right time, and with the right amount. With this method, time is your main enemy as the options decay so quickly. So, many of the times, not only you lose money on the stock you own, but also you will lose on the put option you bought as it does not surpass the strike price for example.

2) Shorting the index or stocks: This method doesn't have the time decay problem of method one. However, 1) You are exposed to unlimited loss, 2) There are usually high margin requirements to short stocks, which may make it an inefficient method, 3) Market volatility may cause your position to be closed automatically by your broker, and 4) Your account may not allow you to short (Such as RRSP accounts in Canada)

3) Buying inverse ETFs: Most of the inverse ETFs are leveraged ones. It is well known that these ETFs have time decay plus some hidden ETF fees (look at SRS or FAZ for example). Even worse, the leveraged ETFs require a very higher margin requirement which again makes them inefficient. There are non-leveraged short ETFs too that may work better, which I don't have much experience with. But even those look to have inconsistent performance over a long period of time (look at the chart comparison of SEF and XLF for example)

The above methods are not necessarily wrong approaches, but due diligence is needed in using them.

Before I explain my method, I would like to draw your attention to the following chart overlay:


It is the long term overlay of the S&P 500 index with CAD/USD (FXC) chart. What shows to be interesting is that the Canadian dollar (to USD) trend follows the same trend as the S&P 500 index. When the index goes up, Canadian dollar also trends up; when the index goes down, the Canadian dollar goes down. So, what is the idea?

The idea is: Instead of shorting the market, one can buy USD/CAD in the forex market. What are the benefits of this method?

1) Leverage: Most of the forex brokers give a very good margin to do forex trades. For example, to buy $40,000 USD.CAD, you only need $1000 in your account. Of course, you have to leave enough cash in your account to avoid margin calls.

2) More freedom: As forex is traded internationally, you can trade forex outside of stocks trading hours giving you more time flexibility.

3) Bottom line: If you buy USD and the value drops: 1) Most probably your stocks (or your index investment) will go a lot higher, 2) It's money! You can keep it and use it to buy cheap merchandise priced in USD, or use it later on when you travel to the US. I don't mind owning USD for long term, but I do mind owning an inverse ETF for long term.

The next question is how to design the portfolio to have enough protection. I will discuss it in future posts. Your comments and thought are welcome.