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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 Peter,

I am 43 years old and my portfolio closely tracks your balanced portfolio. I also have exposure to the us and international stock market. I am at a point that I have enough contribution and exposure to the stock market and I do not plan to contribute more. I also have real estate exposure by owning my own home in Toronto. Now, I am looking for new investment vehicles to invest my disposable income. I have 10 year time horizon. Any general suggestion? I am willing to consider alternative ideas ( e.g. willing to buy a property in the US). Thanks for the great service.
Read Answer Asked by Ron on August 23, 2016
Q: Hello Peter et al.

I have a question regarding stock manipulation. I hear people mentioning about brokerage firms selling small lots of 100 shares to try and keep the stock price down. How does this work for the brokerage firm? Are they not losing money unless they are shorting the stock? If they are not shorting the stock would they not want the stock price to rise to make money? How does this theory work?

Thanks but confused,

Brendan
Read Answer Asked by Brendan on August 22, 2016
Q: Cleaning up a portfolio: I want to know where I could have ideas on how I go about to clean my portfolio. I have too many stocks (losers and winners) in both registered and non-registered accounts. Obviously, I could sell the less promising losers and winners. But I was wondering what are, if any, some of the guidelines as to how to proceed, how many stocks is optimal for a portfolio (around 20 from what I gather so far). Moreover, I have some losers that amount to few hundreds of dollars and would be costly to sell with the commission of 9,99$ per transaction. So I would appreciate pointers and references (books or website) to help me sort things out.

Thanks to you and to the members that would be kind enough to help.

Jean
Read Answer Asked by Jean on August 22, 2016
Q: In a recent answer to a question on syz, esl and csu you said
" SYZ and ESL have historically always had high multiples. Keep in mind also that both have large cash balances which if excluded would lower earnings valuations ".
Can you clarify how large cash balances affect earnings multiples?
How would this be calculated for example with SYZ? ie how much would their current cash balance lower their P/E?

Thanks, as always, for a great service.

Rob
Read Answer Asked by Robert on August 22, 2016
Q: You often refer to a stock as expensive or as cheap or inexpensive. Can you explain what you mean by that. For example are KXS and SIS cheap or expensive? What about BOS at its current price?
Read Answer Asked by David on August 22, 2016
Q: Just an aded information regarding the otc market.
Quotes are no longer available neither level 2. Buying is throwing a dart in a tunnel at night.
Your broker may not allow you to trade, and if it does it will only give you (eventually) the bid/ask spread at the time of the quote.
Then there is the problem of selling, some trades are extremly thin.
If you have a portfolio manager, he may be able to acess OTC. Otherwise good luck.
Read Answer Asked by claude on August 19, 2016
Q: As hard as I try, I can't find a website that shows daily price changed multiplied by shares outstanding. I find this curious as it would seem to be the metric that one should care most about. Then you could see how much market cap was created and destroyed on any given trading day.
Any thoughts?
I found this one which gives daily volume traded times share price, so we can see the daily $ traded.

http://www.barchart.com/stocks/pricevol.php
Read Answer Asked by Bill on August 17, 2016
Q: In concurring with Clarence's comments and observations around CXR.

This includes that management must have integrity and be honest I have learned.

To that point many CEO's, and high level management got to the position they are in due to their sales skills to the board of directors, the public and shareholders and thus meeting, talking with them and listening to them can often only make an investor vulnerable to their sales pitch of saying all is well, do not worry. I have learned that many big investors never talk to the management for this very reason. They do not want to get sucked in so they remove that possibility.

Reading the annual and 1/4'trly reports including the address and final notes can usually reveal the truth as the reports are reviewed by the company's lawyers and they do not want a law suit once they are published.

I understand that earnings and other #'s can me manipulated but over time this can be detected by looking at the other #'s. FCF, Free Cashflow cannot be manipulated as a company either has cash or it does not. They can lie about is but that would not serve them very long or well. Growing FCF year over year over year is one good thing to look for for sound well managed companies.

Also how the CEO is compensated which was over-looked by many in the case of VRX. Are they in for themselves or the long-term business and shareholders?

Read Answer Asked by Stan (1) on August 16, 2016
Q: Trying to think of away to avoid two mistake made recently, or at least increase odds of avoiding in future.

PHM purchased and then up over 100% in few weeks/months, then down to minus 30%-50% range few weeks/months later.

CXR purchased and then up over 70% in few weeks, then down to minus 30%-50% range in a few more months.

Gross losses manageable as portfolio weighting was responsible.

PHM I guess fundamentals did not justify the increase and was popular stock at time is best thought I can think of and maybe a soft sell signal?

CXR seemed to go up on short covering, then down dramatically, then slightly back up on takeover rumours. No idea what to have done differently on this one. Feel like the CEO and CFO just dishonest on it.

Ideas? Lessons?
Read Answer Asked by John on August 12, 2016
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