Contributors



Mason Lankes | [email protected]

Mason is a skilled investor with 10 years of stock marker investing experience. He is an avid researcher who enjoys listening and participating in company conference calls. While Mason has an extremely keen attention to detail, he also openly makes suggestions to company CEOs on how to improve their business or their financials on the conference calls. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with Distinction and enjoys playing the guitar when he gets free time. A typical evening for Mason may include a trip to the shopping centre where he simply browses the latest products and gets a feel for how certain businesses are doing. These real-world observations have served Mason well in the past - he was able to successfully call a top in Apple shares back when they were at $700 pre-split, and sidestepped a $200 decline. Mason's combination of book and street smarts make him a valuable asset to the TMIO team of authors.


Edward Allan | [email protected]

Ed is an accomplished investor and has a feel for picking stocks that is unparalleled. He is a humble Chartered Professional Accountant and specializes in analyzing the complex financials of the banking industry and Chapter 11 scenarios. He once owned the free-falling Wachovia financial at the height of the Great Recession and still managed to triple his investment despite the unprecedented volatility in the stock (which was later purchased by Wells Fargo). On another occasion, Ed detected a fraudulent firm that was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and reported it to the Canadian Securities Administrators. After a long legal battle the TSX-listed company was indeed confirmed as fraudulent and removed from the exchange. Ed has been known to have the utmost ethical prestige and honesty in the industry. Ed comes to The Market is Open as a top writer, just a few years after running his own hedge fund where he was able to return an over 100% return after fees to his investors after a 3 year period. It is an honor to have Ed on the team.


Kaia Beckett | [email protected]

Kaia is an analyst at a local technology firm. She decided to complete her MBA in 2011, which has since opened up more doors in terms of the types of companies that she has selected to research and write about. She is artistic and has a passion for desserts, photography, and yes, Pinterest. Kaia is quite good with image editing software which has helped to propel her career into areas which she never thought she would be interested in. During her MBA, she closely studied the company Activision Blizzard and made hypothetical recommendations for the company's strategy. After realizing all of the work that went into the project and that many of her suggested strategies were in fact already being implemented by the company, she decided to pick up some shares in the actual company. She hasn't looked back since, and the firm's stock is up more than 400% since mid -2012. On a more personal level, Kaia has a love of animals, specifically dogs, which keeps her down to earth as a heart-warming person.


Helen Ackerley | [email protected]

As a journalist, Helen lives by the mantra "Tell it like it is" which has served her well throughout her career in telling the stories of what's new in the world. Her focus is of course the business side of things, where she reports about what companies are working on and what impact their actions can have on the industry as a whole. Helen is a clever writer, a Starbucks aficionado, and loves to travel. Having been to over 60 countries, Helen has a diverse set of global experiences, and thus never leaves the house without her iPad.


Griffin Addison | [email protected]

Griffin resides in the Big Apple and works in the core of the financial district in New York. He lives and breathes the stock market, though he focuses his trades on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Griffin has experience trading the Futures market, but he also spends time examining certain companies that interest him, which changes daily. He has a strong dividend-based long-term portfolio which allows him to make small trades or buy short-term options and not have to worry about losing his quarterly dividend paycheck, as there is always another one on the horizon. Griffin has had multiple wins, but his largest blunder was not purchasing enough shares of Netflix when he spotted the winner way back in 2009, having been a subscriber to the delivery model.


Hashim Desai | [email protected]

Hashim has a passion for sports, and is still wondering how Disney's ESPN division could possibly be in decline. He is an engineer by trade, and works full time as a game developer only checking the stock market once every 3 minutes each day. From time to time Hashim enjoys reliving the classic cartoons he used to love as a kid. The 1994 Spiderman series is still intriguing and inspiring to him (another Disney subsidiary). Hashim loves technical challenges and to solve problems. Looking at a company's balance sheet for him is fascinating, as numbers are his first language. In 2009, Hashim rode Frontline stock up for a moderate gain, and sold near the beginning of 2010 right before a multi-year decline which destroyed what is now the daily most popular stock on Google Finance. While luck was definitely a factor, Hashim's experience with foreign currencies helped him make the crucial sell decision.