Investment Q&A

Q: Hi Peter
Recently several high profile investment advisors have predicted an "eminent crash" in the markets. Any suggestions on how to protect oneself in these uncertain times. Do you believe a crash is eminent.
Thanks.
Cam

Q: Hi Peter,
I’m wondering if it’s possible to access your past comments made when you add or remove stocks from the 5i portfolios. Specifically, right now I’d like to be reminded of what you said regarding Hydro One, but it would be nice to be able to retrieve your comments on companies you pick but have not done reports on.
If such a tool isn’t available now, perhaps you might consider it at some point? Thanks a lot.
Molly

Q: I think I posted a ? about Cougar Asset Mgt attributed to the G&M.

The article was in the Financial Post & by Barry Critchley; Do you Know anything about this firm? e.g Performance & fee structure.

Ernie

Q: Hi There,
Have you heard of RDI Research Driven Research company who claim to
offer some free research? How are they compensated since it is free?
In your opinion is it worth consideration or am I likely always going to get
an optimistic viewpoint so I buy the stock?
http://rdinvesting.com/
thanks

Q: My question is about building my etf portfolio. As I'm young and long term oriented, I would like to allocate a higher % to emerging market. Probably around 20%. I have analyzed many EM ETF and I have noticed how different in country allocation, value, sector allocation they are. Would they idea of buying, lets say 4 or 5 EM ETF that would represent that diversity, instead of one, make sense for you?
What would be the down sides? Cost doesn't appear to be one, has I can buy ETF for free, I don't mind the 'complexity' of rebalancing if my EM attribution goes up or down. I understand that EM might goes up or down has a group, but I found difficult to imagine that, in the longer term, an etf with 30% of Chinese shares and high PE and lots of tech, and one with more Indian, Russian and Brazilian shares, with low PE and energy would perform the same. Because I have no idea witch one will out or underperform, I would guess that this diversification would lower volatility and slightly decrease risk among my EM allocation. Feel free to comment this strategy or to challenge me about it.

Q: In your response this morning to Mike regarding BCI you stated: " Liquidity is an issue however so we would keep that in mind regarding a position size if adding to the name." I would appreciate it if you would explain why liquidity is an issue if I intend to take a position. Thank you.

Q: I see members are looking for charts, with a watch list. These may be useful..
Barchart,com, or tmxmoney.com ....
You have Excellent service.!!!

Q: Instead of Globe Investor watchlists, that have lost much of their utility, I now use the barchart.com watchlists, free for up to 20 watchlists. Plenty of useful features, mainly technical ones. If you call up a ticker on your watchlist the chart allows you to access a comparison chart with up to three other tickers (a feature that disappeared with the revamped Google Finance). The bottom of the main page lists recent news items. (I recommended Barchart to Globe Investor, and now the Globe's watchlists are based on barchart data...)

Q: Hi,
Could you explain the difference between a compounded and an annualized return ?

Thank you

Q: Hi, about the recent question from Brad, who, like many of us is left clueless when recent changes to Globe Investor Watchlist app resulted in loss of a very useful feature which updated news as and when released from various news wire sources for the stocks on the watchlist. I am now using Yahoo Finance ( I think it's free), where I have uploaded my Watch List and most news releases are updated as and when out. The only issue is that, Yahoo Finance also posts Motley Fool/Accesswire articles, frequently, linked to these stocks, but are of no use for me. I am reasonably OK with this.

Q: This is for Brad,
I set up a lot of "alerts" at my online broker to get information relatively quickly.
You can also set up an account (free) at CISION (newswire.ca) under "MY SERVICE" to receive company releases by e-mail.
Hope it helps.
John

Q: Hi Peter
Please help me understand.
In your column in the Post today you claim “our model could care less about the TSX” and as independent investors we are “ free to see to our portfolio far more diversified than the Canadian market”.
So why does the Income Portfolio only have 7 % outside Canada?
Thx Frank

Q: As a follow up to the Greenblatt's formula for selecting value stocks from earlier today, can you please provide a shortlist of your favorite large caps meeting or coming close the "value" requirements and are listed on the TSX?

Thanks

Q: I've noticed very divergent opinions on the future of the Canadian dollar versus other currencies. My own opinion is it's headed down but, as you know, these things are difficult to predict especially when unknown political decisions can suddenly change things. Do you have opinions in this area? How do you anticipate the Canadian dollar will perform versus the US dollar, the Euro, the Pound, etc? Do you make recommendations regarding the amount of foreign exposure in investment portfolios based on forex implications. If so, where (US, European, emerging markets, etc.) and what percentage?
Feel free to choose your own time periods if you feel able to answer this.

Q: Can retail investors ask their broker(say Td) to make their trades Anonymous (broker #1) or is that just available to institutional players? I notice selling of Questor shares by anonymous and wonder if the seller is trying to make shares available on the cheap before next week's management meetings with institutions and analysts.

Q: Perhaps Ron, who was considering Russian ETF's could read the book "Red Notice" by Bill Browder to get a handle on how business is done in Russia.

Q: Hi,

I often read in your commentary that a "...the market cap of XYZ Corp. is simply too small....". With that thought in mind, can you provide some insight as to what is "too small" and at what point (in terms of market cap) that a company escapes the purgatory of being "too small". I ask because I find this somewhat counterintuitive. It would seem to me that a company that is poorly run (but has a larger market cap) can often get more attention than a company that is well run but is much smaller.

Q: If a company is listed on the TSX Venture exchange and also traded OTC in the US can you purchase on one and sell on the other?

Q: Can you explain how the over the counter market works? I was looking at the price for Reliq on TSXV and then on the over the counter market, there was a .50 cent difference in the prices when I was looking. Thanks

Q: Does the data in the company section come from Bloomberg ? Any chance we could export the detailed quote and ratios in excel to compare companies ? How is the leverage ratio calculated ? Thank you