Halloween spare change

It’s a spooky time of year, in more ways than one.

Halloween approaches with its legions of ghouls, ghosts and KPop Demon Hunters (the hottest costume this year, by the way).

The increasingly longer nights, shorter days and looming winter may also deepen a sense of dread already manifesting amid concerns over the economy and household finances.

Tariff upheaval is potentially driving a stake into the heart of the Canadian — and global — economy.

Already, the U.S. economy is displaying zombie-like behaviour with slowing job growth and anxious, debt-laden consumers pulling back on spending.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times by the president of Yale University’s Budget Lab — which examines government policy impact on consumers — says America’s economic engine would be sputtering without massive investment in artificial intelligence.

Increasingly, market watchers are worried about AI, too, potentially being a massive bubble ready to burst.

To top it off, the long-running world order of co-operation and aid has turned into a might-is-right contest, where the weak are scapegoated and the world’s most powerful leader engages in a cryptocurrency schemes.

All the while, his administration slashes aid for its own people and has hacked foreign aid to the bone.

Not even chocolate — among the most integral Halloween ingredients — is sacred. The cocoa industry is suffering from a crop virus affecting the world’s two largest producers: Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

“It’s been good for the price of cocoa, which really only benefits speculators, not the growers or consumers,” says Paul Kawchuk, a wealth adviser with Christianson Wealth Advisors at National Bank Financial Management in Winnipeg, who tracks commodity markets.

Cocoa prices hit US$10,000 last year per metric ton — an all-time high by a wide margin. It has since come down, but the price has already been baked into the candy bars.

Hershey Co. recently increased its prices by low-double-digit percentages.

“If it’s not more expensive, it might not taste as good,” Kawchuk adds, noting chocolate bars this year might contain less chocolate.

Overall, the future of chocolate bars may involve none of the commodity as chocolate-makers seek alternatives, such as fava beans.

Enough of the tricks to haunt a household budget; now for a couple of treats.

For investors, Halloween is often the gateway to better returns — at least for the next several months. Called the “Halloween Effect,” the U.S. stock market typically provides its best span of returns from Oct. 31 until the start of May.

Investors who engage in “seasonal rotation investing” tilt their portfolios toward the stock market in this time frame and then de-risk — “sell in May and go away” — favouring fixed income until the next Halloween.

Historical market data backs up this approach.

The S&P 500 has averaged about seven per cent for Nov. 1 to the end of April for much of the last 50 years, compared with about two per cent from May to the end of October.

Interested investors can look to a Canadian-listed exchange-traded fund, the Global X Seasonal Rotation ETF (HAC), with a 10-year annualized return of about eight per cent. That said, the S&P 500 has averaged about 15 per cent over the same span.

Although the thesis has not held up over the last decade, who can predict what this potentially creepier decade of forecast global instability may hold?

In the meantime, take heart; many small acts of kindness can have an outsized impact, as a new charitable campaign hopes to achieve in leveraging a nostalgic blast from parents’ Halloween past.

The UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) collection boxes are returning… for the digital age.

The UN agency launched a campaign this month selling T-shirts with an image of the iconic UNICEF boxes on them.

UNICEF Canada president and CEO Sevaun Palvetzian says the actual box collection campaign died with the penny more than a decade ago in Canada, and its absence has been a missed opportunity for children to engage “in early-stage philanthropy.”

That teachable Halloween moment is making a comeback with T-shirts manufactured by a Canadian sustainable clothing company, Kotn, and available at unicefhalloween.ca.

The $50-cost — while pricey — goes entirely to UNICEF, Palvetzian says.

What’s more, the shirts have a QR code for candy givers to donate from home via their mobile phone.

UNICEF could use all the assistance it can get to deliver aid to the world’s hot spots of real-life horror — like Sudan, where civil war puts hundreds of thousands of children at risk of starvation.

Compounding the challenge, the Trump administration closed the United States Agency for International Development, which had accounted for about US$6 out of every US$10 of global foreign aid, despite these funds making up slightly more than one per cent of its federal budget.

“It is catastrophic,” Palvetzian says.

She points to Ethiopia, where food insecurity is ever-present, and 90 per cent of therapeutic peanut packages for famine-affected children had come from USAID.

“A couple of these packets a day over a couple of weeks can bring a starving child back to health,” she says, noting the delivery “stopped overnight” after the shutdown.

Consider purchasing a T-shirt a small act of kindness that in aggregate might help fill that global aid gap, Palvetzian says.

At the very least, it’s an opportunity for Canadian children — awash in candy — to help others who have scarcely anything to eat.

Joel Schlesinger is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist

joelschles@gmail.com