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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: Hello 5i
Have allowed MAW150 to become a heavy weighting in Portfolio.
Are you able to comment on potential sources for its lack of performance through 2016? I am a little surprised to be down on the year.
A recent article on MAWER indicated they have likely run out of good investment ideas and their previous choices have run out of juice.(Top award winners in Mutual Funds regressing to moderate performance)

Would you just let them do what they are paid to do (MER= 1.74%) or would you choose to reduce (MAW150: 74% International allocation-Oct 31) by shifting capital to US oriented ETF - XMC?

Portfolio Geographic allocation for International vs USA are about equal currently.

If something else comes to mind as you consider this questions please feel free to add.

Thanks
Dave


Read Answer Asked by David on December 20, 2016
Q: Good morning. I was watching an interview with David Rosenberg who commented that Japanese stocks had an attractive valuation compared to historical norms and should benefit from a depreciating yen. I see that you can buy CJP commission-free in iTrade so was considering it since I have no non-North American exposure. It would be held in RRSP with a long term horizon. Thanks for your insights. Steven
Read Answer Asked by Steven on December 19, 2016
Q: I am a senior and a long time dividend investor. I have found that patience and having some cash on hand to buy bargains have paid off handsomely over the years. When stocks go down, dividends go up and I simply buy more. Eg. BMO@ 56.00, Sunlife@19.00, Fortis@29.00 etc. Except in rare instances (Manulife) the dividends just keep coming. I mostly agree with everything John Heintzl says in his G&M columns. Recently he wrote "I supplement my dividend holdings with diversified ETF holdings". Can you suggest some specific ETFs to balance & diversify my Canadian large cap dividend stocks?
Read Answer Asked by wayne on December 19, 2016
Q: Hi 5i Team,
Ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the job of U.S. President, he has repeatedly made disparaging remarks about China. I'm starting to wonder if all this trash talk might not cause investors to dispose of any holdings they might have in Chinese companies.
I currently own shares in Alibaba but I fear that they might follow the same pattern as Boeing and Northrop Grumman did in the aftermath of negative tweets by the President-Elect in recent weeks.
Do you see this as a likely possibility? Should I sell as a precaution?
Robert
Read Answer Asked by Robert on December 13, 2016
Q: Hello Team,
I was reading a recomendation on ING-N recently which seemed favourable.
It indicated that ING was well capitalized, had a yield of 5.5%, a PE of 10 and that it was vallued at less than tangible book value,sounds ok to me.
I get that it is not something you would normally follow but any comments/insight would be appreciated. That is bescause your feedback is always balanced and astute!
thanks so much.
Read Answer Asked by ralph on December 13, 2016
Q: In response to another subscriber's question you said you "...would be more comfortable with Nestle. It trades at 19X earnings, with a 3.4% dividend. Debt is high, but so is free cash flow. Solid earnings growth is also expected from the company. It does not have a great record of beating earnings estimates, but overall we think it would also be fine as a consumer sector investment."

Nestle trades as NSRGY on the pink sheets. What would be the tax treatment if I bought and held this in my RRIF account? My understanding is that Swiss withholding taxes would be deducted at source and the after tax yield would be much less than 3.4%.
Read Answer Asked by David on December 08, 2016
Q: Re: Comment by Denis
Unilever trades under two primary symbols: UL and UN.

UL is traded on the London exchange and there are no withholding taxes. (but some minor administrative fee).
UN is also Unilever, but is traded in Amsterdam and there is Dutch witholding tax.

Hence for an RRSP or TFSA, one should always buy UL. As for a non-registered account, if the withholding tax on UN does not exceed 15% (the max foreign dividend tax credit offered by the CRA to individuals, to the best of my knowledge), it doesn't make any difference whether you purchase UL or UN.
Read Answer Asked by Gregory on December 05, 2016