Q: Retired, dividend-income investor. Sitting on roughly 5-6% cash for topping up existing positions to, over time, hit Asset Allocation targets.

Candidates = BCE, GSY, HHL, HMAX, XST, ZUT. If I was deciding to deploy funds to create the largest total return over the next year or two, from their existing valuation, a) in what order would you deploy the funds and b) a short qualifier for each position?

My view = buy in this order:
ZUT = good momentum, room to run before hitting earlier peak
GSY = good value, $150-155 should be excellent value
XST = graph against 50 and 200mda...very tight chart....could buy anytime
HMAX = good value, banks should run
HHL = healthcare stocks should get over their fear of their new boss in a few months....or not. Give it some time.
BCE = last on the list. Just rebought after cap loss capture. Give it even more time.

Thanks for your help....Steve

Q: Retired (70 yrs old), dividend-income investor. Been meaning to ask this question for a long time. We run a concentrated portfolio of roughly 10 ETFs and 10 stocks, plus fixed income on top. Our pro-rated MER for the equity ETFs is 0.64 and for the entire portfolio is 0.38.

I use the ETFs above that are sector ETFs (like HHL, NNRG, XIT) as my proxy for the sector and am ok with the trade off of paying fees for a sector ETF instead of having lots of stocks.

I then add my individual stock selections to achieve my targeted Asset Allocation for the entire portfolio (like AD, BCE, FTS, GSY, RY, NWC, PBH, TRP, WSP, etc). I weight each of these relative to my risk tolerance.

Does this make sense to you? Does my "sector ETF" make sense, especially with a potentially large weighting in one ETF. Virtually all of my ETFs are capped at around 7% of the equity portfolio and the stocks are capped at 5% max.

Your thoughts on my strategy and on my MER....thanks...Steve

Q: Retired, dividend-income investor. I have spent a bit of time using your chart feature, which I think is excellent. I like the feature of it being total return (CG plus dividends).

Comparing total return for ZEB vs ZWB over various timeframes is easy, since they both have adequate history. The complication arises when adding HMAX to the comparison, due to it's very short history and therefore not being through a full cycle. It is apparent to me that the covered call ETFs do indeed give up total return for higher steady income.

To my amateur eyes, it appears that ZEB is the clear winner over 1-3-5 year timeframes, with HMAX taking over 2nd place in the 1 year timeframe.

However without the benefit of a full economic cycle, I can not come to a final decision. I have started building a position in HMAX, but I am now wondering if I should have been building a ZEB-ZWC position. I know that ZEB is banks, whereas HMAX is financials (banks, ins, etc).

Any thoughts you could throw in the mix would be helpful. Any indication of how it might perform over the longer term, based on the history so far....thanks...Steve