No. I had the same thoughts you did. Will I be useless outside auditing? I just decided I had to try something else.

I can still see myself going back to a more taxation focus via loads of PD and just work 4 months of the year after I am done where I'm at.

The monotony of month ends, quarter ends, year-ends is not something I am interested in for the rest of my life.


This post was edited by SBD on Nov 17 2020 05:56pm

That sums up quite simply how I feel right now. In terms of going back for taxation - tax is not really the route I wanted to go. I was great at it, just dont want to do tax the rest of my life. I understood audit has many more exit opportunities.

And that is what I want to avoid as well. the perpetual month end. But I audit itself gets like that too - same procedures, same risk, dealing with the same shit every file lol.

how did you get into the "other client service work" at the firm? ultimately I may even see about going into internal audit/internal consulting but still unsure lol. I know a lot of people go into FA just to get away from the public hours.

I worked for a mid sized firm, my office was only 35 peak during busy season. It's significantly easier to get yourself on other engagements outside your typical audit engagements when you're in a small office. I taught lots of two week courses to gov't workers, did corporate and personal tax, risk audits like privacy audits, tax reorgs, etc. You just get a lot of exposure since you don't exactly have different sets of people for different tasks when you're that small.

I also serviced a large group of unsophisticated clients. I would typically have anywhere from 100 to 300 adjusting entires before you could even audit the file. When you service that level of clientele you quickly learn how they should be doing their job.

But all of the above becomes repetitive. Same mess year after year with the expectation that the auditor will fix it. One day I said why is my partner getting a cut for this when I can go fix things myself and not lose 1/3 to overhead and 1/3 to a partner cut.

Anyway pm me if you ever have any questions Im spamming this thread.

This post was edited by SBD on Nov 17 2020 06:34pm

The MAX is now unbanned in the US. Should be another good day for Boeing.

If Southwest goes up 3% today it will trigger my sell order. There's only 20-25% between its current price and its pre-pandemic price. Meanwhile, their balance sheet is significantly worse off. Perhaps they have reduced competition in the future due to other airlines going bankrupt but I don't see why it should go back to pre-pandemic levels until that's proven due to the recent damage to their balance sheet. The risk of the upside now greatly outweighs the potential downsides.

This post was edited by SBD on Nov 18 2020 08:16am

Running out of short term catalysts. Like what takes the markets higher in the short term? Election priced in, rona vaccine priced in. I suppose round 2 of stimulus is still to come but that will probably be less than people expect since we have good news on the vaccine side.

The next catalyst is months away imo with the actual mass rollout of vaccine administration.

Fall on increased cases/restrictions, rise on another treatment/vaccine. We go sideways or slow grind up until stim pack 2.0 imo.

FDA approval might create some exuberance. My sell order on Southwest triggered this morning. Boeing @ 230 did not trigger.

I think ill look at Canadian stocks now. The Canadian gov't did say they would help airlines if they refunded customers, so I might dig into that, see if its just the Canadian Gov't blowing smoke.

This post was edited by SBD on Nov 18 2020 08:58am

ive been holding CHR For years - such a nicely run company - been DRIPing the dividends for almost 4 years now and my ACB is just around 5.5.

Hoping for a speedy recovery for them. I think their results are heavily tied to AC as they provide the regional services for them.

i shot myself in the foot with alot of my Canadian company holdings such as td, enb, and didn't set stop losses. been holding red for a while now.

Canadian banks are fine long term. We're heavily regulated and you're likely DRIPing away averaging the cost down. I also hold Enbridge, I was making great headway prior to the pandemic. Another one that is DRIPing, averaging down.

im nervous on ENB with biden going in, likely more road blocks for pipelines.