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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: Hi Team

Certain companies such as BEP, AQN pay dividends in 'US" dollars. What is the significance to me?

Is there a foreign holding tax on the dividend ? (like for an american equity)


does my taxation change, is there an advantage to holding it an RRSP versus non registered account.

I am with BMO investorline and I think they pay it out converted back to canadian dollars, is that the financial industry way or is it possible to keep it in us dollars ?

thank you

Ernie
Read Answer Asked by Ernest on March 06, 2017
Q: I have subscribed to your 5i Research for a few years and have never learned more throughout my years of investing than I have learned over the few years with you. A question that I should know the answer to is a term used at BNN and by you all the time is a stock is trading at 10 times earnings. Does this mean it takes $10.00 of earnings for the shares to go up a dollar? Thank you. Dennis
Read Answer Asked by Dennis on March 06, 2017
Q: Good Day to all. I'm 63, retired and have $400,000 to invest. Funds won't be required for 8 years, I have a moderate risk tolerance and would target a 4% dividend return on the portfolio.

In this scenario and with current economic/political environment, do you recommend:

(a) an investor buy your model income portfolio as it is currently reported, or

(b) a different portfolio of stocks and perhaps ETFs and

(c) should such an investment be made today, in whole or in part.

Thank you for your valuable and much appreciated advice.

Ian
Read Answer Asked by Ian on March 03, 2017
Q: I noticed that ITP shows "share based compensation expense" every quarter (for several years) as an item to be excluded when calculating "adjusted earnings", thereby considerably increasing "adjusted earnings" over what would be otherwise. It is a reasonably consistent number, and a very large component of their earnings. It seems to be just a variable "employee expense". Is this sort of accounting common in financial reporting of "adjusted" earnings, and is it something to watch out for?
Read Answer Asked by David on March 02, 2017
Q: Hello 5i
As I watch several investments plumb new lows, it strikes me that things may have turned and I am unaware.

We have seen 5i exit some names that were originally intended for 5 year hold but today I have to say my investment measurements are lacking when it comes to exit signs.
In some cases, I would get out as the stock price breaks the uptrend but have been ignoring this giving some space for volatility.
Given my experience in finding stock prices equal to zero in my portfolio, I would rather buy stocks that go up.
How does an investor distinguish between a stock going to zero versus one that is just doing the volatility dance and on a temporary path to a short lived low price?

I would rather not be found holding companies indicating 40%, 60% and 80% losses going forward.

Your thoughts on this are appreciated.
Thanks
Dave
Read Answer Asked by David on March 01, 2017
Q: The prospect of some kind of a border adjustment tax remains in the US, and while the market seems to like the other tax proposals, it does not seem to be responding to this risk. I would appreciate your thoughts on what such would mean for the markets, and the best way to defend a portfolio. Certainly Canadian exporters would be at risk, but I would suspect the damage would be much more widespread than that. It would seem to me that it would be highly inflationary, as well as likely to cause various trade wars.
Whether it will or even could happen depends upon which media one reads, but the risk is not zero.
Thanks for your thoughts. Patrick.
Read Answer Asked by Patrick on March 01, 2017
Q: Good morning Peter and Team,

I track my portfolio in real-time using Google Sheets, which has the ability to "fetch" a price of a stock or ETF, but not if it's listed on the new Aequitas NEO Exchange. I was surprised when CLU.C started showing up as an error on my spreadsheet, since I didn't realize that iShares moved this ETF from the TSX to the NEO exchange. I contacted the NEO exchange and have copied their answer below in case other members could benefit from this information.

Jerry,

Thank you for reaching out to NEO with respect to market data on Google. Please accept my apologies for the tardy reply. Your email only just came to my attention today.

NEO has been reaching out to Google for many months with respect to making NEO market data available within their platform, but they have been less than responsive. There are no NEO fees for them to incorporate our data, but they have indicated that is not a priority for them. I encourage you to get in touch with them directly to let them know of your experience. We do have real-time data available for you on our Website and are currently reviewing what we can make available with respect to Excel functionality. Here is the link:

https://aequitasneoexchange.com/en/security-detail?q=CLU.C

Hope this helps. Please feel free to reach out with any further questions. We are expecting momentum to build with more NEO listings, so hopefully Google will get things moving soon.

It would appear that there's no real way at this time to automatically "fetch" a price for a stock/ETF that's traded on the NEO exchange. I will email Google and perhaps if others do this as well, the NEO data will soon be added to the Google platform.

Hope this information is of assistance.
Read Answer Asked by Jerry on March 01, 2017
Q: Hello 5i team,
Your article on hedging for a market downturn is quite timely; thank you.
A 5% or 10% correction is not too worrisome as it could be recovered in a relatively short period of time.
I do not foresee a "black swan" event; do you? In my opinion, the current steepness of the yield curve does not signal the eventuality of such an event.
Regards,
Antoine
Read Answer Asked by Antoine on March 01, 2017
Q: Comment on this question:
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February 28, 2017 - Asked by Sal

Q: Hello 5i
About a month in and wanted to say great service and looking forward to the future. In looking at the companies you cover it seems like your B and higher ratings have been very successful while protecting and growing capital. Curious to know if you have a report on the total returns based on ratings. For example all B rated reports have returned x%, C x% etc.?For me screening by ratings of B and better will be the starting point of my investment selections to be further investigated

Thanks
Sal

5i Research Answer:
We have not done this screening, and historically it may be difficult because of course some ratings will have changed over time, which would mess up the data set.
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Very interesting idea! It should not really mater if your rating for a stock changed. 'Just' calculate the return from your rating date to when the rating changed (or to now if the rating has not changed). Monthly.

I believe the dataset could be normalized in some fashion (statistician?) to account for the number and age of ratings in each category, etc.
Read Answer Asked by J Carl on February 28, 2017
Q: Hello 5i
About a month in and wanted to say great service and looking forward to the future. In looking at the companies you cover it seems like your B and higher ratings have been very successful while protecting and growing capital. Curious to know if you have a report on the total returns based on ratings. For example all B rated reports have returned x%, C x% etc.?For me screening by ratings of B and better will be the starting point of my investment selections to be further investigated

Thanks
Sal
Read Answer Asked by Sal on February 28, 2017
Q: Greetings Team:

Greg Bonnel on BNN was wondering if the TSE would show a gain or loss for Monday on the Close and when he turned around the TSE lost about 70 points in a manner of seconds. Looking at my own portfolios I noticed that the banks and insurance companies had all dropped suddenly. Computers to blame, I reckon. Would you please comment on this.
Read Answer Asked by james on February 27, 2017
Q: You suggest that a well-diversified portfolio is one that holds investments in the 11 sectors of the TSX. Pat McKeough of TSI, who is also a believer in portfolios that include all sectors, uses more broadly-based criteria. He breaks the TSX down into five components - Mfg and Industry, Resources, Consumer, Finance and Utilities. I don't see this a radically different than 5i's approach other than in the Consumer area where McKeough does not differentiate between discretionary and non-discretionary consumer companies.

I would appreciate your comments on these two approaches and specifically, do the two consumer sectors tend to be uncorrelated?

Appreciate your insight?

Paul F.
Read Answer Asked by Paul on February 27, 2017
Q: I read on the FAQ's of an ETF Website the following question:
"Are an ETF's Assets Under Management and Trading Volume good indicators of liquidity".
The answer they gave was: "No. The most important aspect related to the liquidity of any ETF is that while the liquidity of the ETF itself (the ETF’s own trading volume on the exchange) may be deemed poor or limited, the key gauge of that ETF’s liquidity is the liquidity of its underlying exposure.
With the mechanism of creation and redemption of ETFs, a designated broker (DB) is responsible for ensuring that market prices track the ETFs’ net asset value (NAVs). If the underlying securities can be easily bought and sold, a tight fit between price and NAV is easily maintained.
Hence, an ETF with small AUM and little trading volume can still be highly liquid if its underlying basket of securities is liquid."
Is this essentially correct, and if it is I'm still not sure how this would work? I have avoided many ETF's for what appears to be poor liquidity and trading volume. If I want to sell an ETF and level 2 quotes show a large spread to sell for example 1000 shares, will additional shares in the ETF somehow be created to get a fair market price based on the underlying stocks held in that ETF if I put a Sell order in on what appears to be a low volume ETF? What I am getting at basically is - is there any way of knowing what the price spread will be on the sale if additional ETF units that are created "on the fly" by the DB? I may not be interpreting the answer given above so please try to expand and clarify their explanation.
Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by Alan on February 27, 2017
Q: Good morning Peter and Team,

You have said that you prefer to "sell the losers". What criteria would you suggest to decide what to sell, and when
to sell it? Specifically, in a balanced portfolio, I am frustrated with HLF as it's down 28%. Your recent answer to Lee
in which you expressed disappointment in their earnings release has caused me to question continuing to hold HLF.

In the Consumer Staples sector, we hold ADW.A, ATD.B, ECI, HLF, PBH, and SAP. We also have a small amount of XST for re-balancing as it's a commission-free ETF in our iTrade account. (I happily note that XST is a top-performing ETF in the Canadian Money Saver).

If we were to dump HLF, what would you suggest we add to among our existing holdings in this sector? My feeling is that there are better opportunities elsewhere, but as always, I appreciate your insight and advice.
Read Answer Asked by Jerry on February 27, 2017
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