Investment Q&A

Q: 5i:
read this on Seeking Alpha, and HAD to share, as investments can be very somber reading, this is meant to put a smile on people's faces (investing should be a LITTLE fun):
I've bought stocks and sold stocks and held stocks; just not at the correct time!
lol, and the best to y'all.

Q: Hi guys,

After many years of successful investing, I've finally opted for a 'margin' account. While I don't plan on using the margin excess for further long exposure, I would like to try shorting a name or two (I'll keep the positions small, maybe 2% each for now). Are there any good short candidates that come to mind? I want to avoid the battleground stocks (VRX, HCG), but would love to find something that is just a real dog.

Thanks,
Mike

Q: I am always leery of a company where the insiders do not have any or perhaps very few common shares--Instead they have--options--multiple voting shs--performance share units--subordinate voting shs etc.Common shs mean to me you got some skin in the game--I dont understand all these other classes of shs---TOY is a good example of this.I dont like options thats no commitment at all and hurts the share price.Should I be concerned about these other classes of shares? What do they all mean?
Thanks--I have just had your portfolio review and find it very helpful--would reccommend it to any body.

Peter

Q: Hello 5i:
I would like to have a better understanding about market sectors that are benefiting from higher inflation, and sectors that are preferable when inflation is lower than expected. Is it possible to make such a clear cut categorization, and if yes, in which sectors shuld I invest during inflationary and deflationary times?

Q: Hello 5i
I plan on shifting a large sum of RRSP monies from my financial planner over to Questrade so i can manage it myself with the guidance of 5i Research of course .
Should i be concerned with the safety of these investments with Questrade in terms of account hacking etc via computer . Do brokerage companies generally have insurances for this type of thing ? I really don't want to be putting myself in a position of high risk unknowingly .
Thanks
Bill

Q: Would it be possible to include whether the dividend of companies that you cover qualify for the dividend tax credit or contain foreign income or return of capital? This information is a lot harder to find on company websites than I thought it would be since I think is quite important information. I appreciate it might be hard to include provide this info for every question asked (thought it would be nice when the question does pertain specifically to the dividend) but the Reports should include it, I think. It may also help to cut down on the number of questions as to which account stocks should be held.

Thank you.

Paul F.

Q: I bot a warrant several years ago for $3.00. It will run out in June of this year and is now worth two cents. Can I do nothing and just this run out or do I have to sell it. Money from the sale will not cover the brokers fee.

Q: Recently a member suggested The Cerbat Gem as a free investment news and recommendations site. May I advise caution as concerns this site.

Yes, they aggregate press releases, broker reports, and trading monitors in an impersonal (robotic?) style, and perhaps this provides a useful service. But there is little to distinguish The Cerbat Gem from (for example) The Stock Rover, Buckeye Business Review, Chaffey Breeze, Rockville Register, The Markets Daily, Community Financial News, Key Gazette, etc., etc., etc. - all of whom print variations on essentially the same information.

Still not put-off? Consider, then, that the site's Omaha, Nebraska street address can't be located via Google maps, and that it shares a Florida phone number with Sports Perspectives (another address-unfindable investment-news site.) Indeed, we might wonder whether its real purpose were to generate webpages which, subsequently, show-up on news-based search results, thereby creating click-bait for the site's endless pop-up ads.

Q: Your readers may be interested in a couple of free investment sites that I use.
The first is Globe Investor/My Watchlist which publishes daily
(before the market opens)-Analyst upgrades & downgrades and Small cap stocks to watch.Then the next day some of the selections are reported in the Globe & Mail. For instance Cirius Trust was an upgrade yesterday and was covered today in Eye on equities in the Globe & Mail. This morning before the market opened Shopify was upgraded .
The 2nd is The Cerbat Gem ,a U.S. site that covers investment news and recommendations from numerous investment houses in Canada & U.S.
Recently they had reports on Crh,Sis and Zcl.

Q: WHEN A COMPANY SAYS IT IS EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES AND HIRES AN INVESTMENT
BANKER TO EXPLORE THOSE ALTERNATIVES; HOW OFTEN WILL A SALE HAPPEN IN YOUR OPINION? I REALIZE THE BOARD WILL ONLY SELL IF THEY GET A GOOD PRICE BUT I WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR THOUGHTS AND DO YOU THINK CDI-N IS WORTH HOLDING FOR A POSSIBLE SALE? I DO NOT OWN THIS COMPANY YET BUT WOULD CONSIDER PURCHASING IT. THANKS

Q: April 11/17 ? asked by Terry re large block
trading:
'Dark pools' are private networks which do not have to report trades to the consolidated volume till after completion. In the US, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citibank and others have them and apparently account for as much as 40% of the volume. What is the situation re 'dark pools' in Canada? Also, what is the situation with TSE trades reported as 'anonymous' broker?

Q: How do you interpret this news about SNA? ... (April 5) .. "delisted from the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V") after the close of trading on Thursday, April 6, 2017 and will be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE")" .. and a little jump in the price today .. what does this move from one exchange to another mean exactly? .. is there anything significant here? thanks

Q: I have heard that at higher incomes dividends can be taxed more heavily than capital gains. If true, at what income point does it make more sense to hold dividend paying stocks in a non-registered account instead of in an RRSP?

Q: TFSA
I should only put Canadian investments in it.
If I put in US dividend stocks I will have an issue with the 15%
withholding tax.

Q: What happens to shares that are not tendered but the 50% target is achieved. Do share still trade as today? Can you still expect to get the 1.95 after April 20th?

Q: Are you aware that Ryan Modesto is on Market Call on BNN at noon today--watch and support.

Q: Hi 5I, I need some clarification on time horizons and when to switch out and/or sell a company. If one says that they are holding long what time frame are we looking at? Sometimes I hear 3 to 5 years, other times 5 to 10 years. But in all of your portfolios what is the design factor? If one is long term investor and a stock has gone up 40%+ why would you need to sell it if the time horizon has not been completed? Timing has not done well for me. So I know that re balancing a portfolio means not going over a certain weighting per stock or sector for safety but what are you usually looking at to get out of a stock. Sometimes you say you are comfortable in people getting into a stock for long term but then you might turn around and move it out of the portfolio. So should I follow a multi-year hold, or follow the portfolio with the recommended in's and out's as you try to make the model better. Thanks for your advice.

Q: Peter, as a former portfolio manager, how do you buy large volumes of shares? Would you execute the order yourself or would you have a team to do this? My personal portfolio is over 8 digits so I always question myself on how to execute positions. I currently only buy companies greater than $400 million and always calculate the average daily volume multiplied by the current price to see if my trade will change the market. I take a current price and discount it by an educated guess % and enter the whole trade in and let it sit and the market move into my buy. This way I am not bidding up the stock. The bank has offered block trades, but I am not in control. In your experience what is the best way to enter and/or exit a large position?

Q: Hi 5i Team:
While I have a good sense of how my overall portfolio is performing I am struggling to find an uncomplicated method of assessing the contribution of individual holdings. When I try to apply a formula for CAGR say, I find myself stymied in almost all cases by having bought and sold shares over time,or having return of capital issues, or at the very least not necessarily re-investing the dividends in the same stock over the time frame in question but just somewhere in the portfolio. Can you suggest a workable way to bring some discipline (objective "hard numbers") to assessing the contribution of individual holdings to the overall portfolio given the above types of complications (and more)? If the answer is too involved/lengthy for Q&A perhaps you would consider the topic for a future blog?
Thanks,

Q: As a new member, I am puzzled by the composition of the Coverage Summary spreadsheet and accompanying 70-company report database. Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems to me that the research database would be more useful to an investor if it contained 70 companies all of which are highly rated. I don't understand the rationale for including companies that are rated lower than B. There must be more Canadian companies that would fall into the A or B categories. It also puzzles me that many of the companies in the model portfolios are not covered by the research.

In summary, would it be possible to include some notes on the website or accompanying the spreadsheet/database explaining how the 70 companies were chosen, how this research is to be used by an investor, and how and when companies are added or removed from the coverage.

Thanks in advance.