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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: As I grow older I find myself more risk adverse. You receive many questions regarding going to more cash when one fears a market correction and you claim, and I agree, that market timing is very difficult to pull off. None the less I am fearful of large loses similar to those encountered 10 years ago.
Now to my question. If one is investing for income, as I understand it, if the dividend is safe then a capital loss while not good can be tolerated with the hope of recovery because of the steady income flow. I am setting up a RRIF and am concerned about equity draw downs from a recession as well as increasing interest rates. In conclusion an income investor should be able to sleep at night knowing there is a steady income stream. I am trying to generate a 5% annual dividend stream. Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by Richard on June 26, 2017
Q: Doc as many questions as required....

I am looking at moving out of a managed portfolio for which I pay about 1.5% management fee plus the fees for the products in the fund ( averages about 0.29% for a net of about 1.79%). The managed fund has not beat its benchmark net of fees in last 5 years so I am giving my manager and the product the boot.

Main reasons are:
1. I am paying for an "actively" managed fund that really is performing like a index fund ( I can buy the fund benchmark as ETFs for %0.23 mer)
2. I dont really need it to be balanced due to my other investments. It was useful when I had less money, less time and less knowledge.
3. I have the time, temperament and knowledge to move it all to be self managed

My plan is:

1. Not have any fixed income holdings as my wife's federal government pension counts for all required fixed income/bond. It is also the anchor that allow me to be more aggressive with our other investments

2. All Canadian exposure will be via stocks loosely following your balanced equity portfolio.

3. For the US-global exposure I am considering adopting the US/global portion of the CME ETF portfolio with the following weighting: 10% VEE, 10% VE, 20% SPY, 25% VIG, 25% IWO, 10% ZWU. ( ie cut out most CAD and bond stuff and kept the same weighting as CMS portfolio for the rest)
4. Simplify the number of products I have across multiple account. In other words balance globally vs balancing within each individual account.

So my questions are:
1. At a high level what if any changes would you suggest to this approach
2. My portfolio is a mess with multiple products across TFSA, RSP, RESP, and unregistered accounts for both me and my wife. Very generally can you remind me which products should be in which account for tax efficiency.
3. Any suggestions on how best to transition...general plan is all new money goes to ETFs, move 1/3 each year out of managed fund to ETF portfolio.

Tom
Read Answer Asked by Tom on June 26, 2017
Q: for my sons RESP can I get your opinion of the 3.25% 5 year GIC being offered by Home Capital? The amount is far below the $100,000 threshold.

Is a safe 3.25% a reasonable rate of return for an RESP that I need in 5 years time? Alternatively, would I be better to off with the investment strategy your team outlined which would have a higher potential yield but principle risk.

Your thoughts are appreciated,

Don
Read Answer Asked by Don on June 23, 2017
Q: My wife and I are voting these days on a number of proxy votes. My questions are about directors:
-- For some companies, particularly oil and gas companies, the proposed directors sometimes seem to be affiliated (director or executive) with a competitor. Is it reasonable that directors are affiliated with competitors?
-- Some directors who are a Chairman or CEO of one company are also directors of multiple other companies. How can they have the time to do this? How many outside directorships is it reasonable for a Chairman or CEO to have?
Read Answer Asked by Doug on June 21, 2017
Q: Could you confirm that dividends of companies domiciled in Canada, regardless of the exchange they are listed on, and paid and received in US dollars still qualify for the Canadian dividend tax credit? As such, I assume that there would not be any US withholding tax (non-reg accounts). It would only be the US dividends from US corporations that would have 15% withheld?

Thank you.

Paul F.
Read Answer Asked by Paul on June 20, 2017
Q: My question concerns a robust method to estimate free cash flow.I have been running some calculations as part of my investment process and I make use of Free Cash Flow extensively in my models.

Usually I just use Operating Cash Flow - average of last five years CapEx. However in many cases such as GIL there are large variations in working capital from one year to the next. Management can boost operating and free cash flow by reducing working capital in the short run. This is a one-off rather than permanent boost to cash flow and can give a misleading measure of sustainable cash flows. The opposite is also true and management can make short term investments.

Some authors recommend removing changes in working capital from the calculation and defining free cash flow as Post-tax profit + Depreciation and amortization - stay in business CapEx. The stay in business CapEx is then estimated as the greater of the average of last five years CapEx or 120% of depreciation. Sometimes this adjusted definition of Free Cash Flow is also called owner earnings or Cash Profits.

With respect to GIL this approach certainly seems to give a much better free cash flow figure, but I wonder if this is wishful thinking? Is a company that over five years or more has to constantly deplete its working capital really showing us that it actually has a higher CapEx requirement? I would appreciate your comments.
Read Answer Asked by Andrew on June 19, 2017