skip to content
  1. Home
  2. >
  3. Investment Q&A
You can view 3 more answers this month. Sign up for a free trial for unlimited access.

Investment Q&A

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

Q: Hi 5i,
In Jan 2018, I added mtum to my mom’s tfsa as her us $ holding. It would represent the most risky part of her holdings in the Tfsa
Since then, I have read that momentum stocks/strategies do not do well in a bear market. Is there any truth to that claim? With a pb over 4 and a pe over 26 should I stay the course, or purchase 2 or 3 value stocks in her account with that us $?. If the latter, any suggestions?
Many thanks,
Read Answer Asked by Kat on June 04, 2018
Q: Good Morning. In addition to my Canadian holdings, I have a well diversified of large cap US equities, most of them return a small dividend, all of them highly are highly affected by the news of the day, hour, minute.
As this ETF, returns a decent dividend, year after year increase in value & would diversify my holdings into small-cap stocks in sectors less available in Canada, do you think it may be a wise investment, as an alternative to IWO? I think, perhaps unreasonably, that small cap companies may be less subject to "news", because if these politicians mention CAT or say FB, as examples, everyone has an opinion, however small caps daily fly under the rhetoric radar.
I am not trying to hide from volatility by selling large caps to take a position in small caps, just trying to reduce it overall, in my holdings.
Do you know of any other US EFT, that is similar in nature to this one?
Thank you so much in advance.

Read Answer Asked by Susan on June 04, 2018
Q: Greetings 5i team,

I am not sure i fully understand the risks associated with this floating rate ETF. Can you explain to me how they are paying out such a high dividend when the the underlying assets do not. In addition, is there an equivalent US ETF you would recommend. I need income in both Canada and the US!
Cheers
Read Answer Asked by kelly on June 01, 2018
Q: In my daughter's RESP I hold TD(39%)up 13%, PBH (39%)up 110%, GUD(17%) down 20% and 5% cash.
I still have 9 years to go before the first withdrawal.
I was thinking of diversifying TD and/or PBH. Which dividend ETF (with growth potential) would you recommend?
Read Answer Asked by JR on May 31, 2018
Q: On BNN this morning Larry Berman made a comment about ETFs that are sold in Canada and are essentially repackaged ETFs from the US. He stated that there is some double taxation going on. I believe related to withholding taxes although he didn't explain in detail.
I hold VGG and VEE which are repackaged holdings of VIG and VWO, respectively.
Is this in fact true and how much of an impact would this mean to the rate of return?
Read Answer Asked by Bruce on May 29, 2018
Q: I am looking for some guidance regarding a retirement plan for someone who is mid 40's; doesn't work for various reasons and has been using an expensive investment advisor. She doesn't know or want to learn about investing for herself. She requires Canadian monthly income and what I think makes sense is to invest her funds in a CDN hedged fund that tracks the S&P 500 such as VSP. The average annual return for this fund is 13.9% since its inception date of Nov 2012 and it pays total dividends of 1.5% annually. I guess I could look at the US website to see the longer term investment returns for the S&P 500. I was thinking of suggesting an ETF REIT for monthly cash flow but the investment returns are much less than the S&P 500. So my thoughts are to invest fully in the S&P 500 and take out money when needed either on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. Its a simple plan to understand and should work. Of course the S&P 500 will go down at some point in time in the future but with 40 years to be invested I don't think this should be a problem as long as the funds stay invested in the ETF. Your comments would be greatly appreciated.
Read Answer Asked by stephen on May 28, 2018
Q: I have a sizeable position in the Mawer balanced fund in my non-registered account from the sale of house a couple years ago. I have treated this as a standalone portfolio so that should I decide to use the funds for a large purchase such as another house, I do not need to make a larger number of trades to rebalance my main portfolio.

As I do not anticipate using the funds for a number of years, I have been considering replacing MAW104 with Horizon's swap based ETFs to defer any taxable income and create a balanced portfolio from the 5 funds. My thought is that over a number of years the tax savings and reduced MER may outweigh the potential returns of the actively managed fund.

My main reservations in proceeding are the liquidity of these ETFs through an economic downturn or major market sell off, and with the solid long term returns of the MAW104 fund, is there really much upside in making the switch?

Appreciate your thoughts.
Read Answer Asked by Jeffrey on May 28, 2018
Looking for more? Sign up for a FREE 14 day trial! No credit card required

We invite you to sign up for a 14 day free trial of 5i Research!
Experience all the benefits and tools we have to offer; stock research, model portfolios, Q&A with our experts, and so much more. Join a community of like-minded investors today!