Investment Q&A

Q: I am thinking of investing with a hedge fund. Can you give me your thoughts, and are there any that you could recommend? Thanks for your help.

Q: This is for the person who accidentally bought CNR on the New York exchange instead of Toronto. With dual-listed stocks, you can have it moved from the US side of your account to the Canadian side, or vice versa. You will therefore not lose anything on currency conversions. I have done this in my TD Waterhouse account both ways. As well, if you have a Canadian stock you want to sell, and were going to convert the proceeds to US cash, if the stock in dual-listed, just transfer it to the US side to sell. That way, you avoid the 2-3% currency conversion fee that TD Waterhouse charges.

Q: Can you tell me what is meant when talking about "ROAE" and how it is calculated?
Thanks
Dave

Q: Hello team,

I am looking to start an RRSP account with about $25,000 with a maximum growth objective, being fairly comfortable with volatility. Could you please give me your thoughts on the list of stocks below? Is this a good diversified mix? Should I buy at current levels or wait for a pull back on the ones nearing 52 week high? Please feel free to suggest alternatives.
Here is my list:
AVO; BPY.UN; GIB.A; WSP; HLF; TELUS (or GIL); WCP; BDI; MDA.

Thanks as always,

BK

Q: Regarding John's CNR question (October 29, 2014 (asked by John )).

If John wants to hold his CNR position back in CDN dollars, most brokerages will journal the shares over to the Canadian side if you give them a call and ask. HTH

Q: Peter: On an attempt to buy 100 shares CNR I hit the wrong button & bought in NY with Cdn dollars. To sell now would mean taking a hit on the exchange rate. It has kept pace with the TSE since. Does NYC & TSE usually keep pace when stocks are on both exchanges? Please advise (All Thumbs) Thanks

Q: On BNN you mentioned that we were probably in the sixth inning for auto related stocks. Are you making a correlation to baseball? Or does this refer to 6th inning out of 10 in business terms.

Q: What does 'double down' mean?

Q: I was talking to Peter at the Money Show along and so were many others. I put in limit orders and would it be a good thing if I put the limit order for more than one day? Asking about a couple of my holdings SYZ has large daily swings of almost 10% - is this indicating something? DEE (Delphi) has been in a downwards trend about the biggest downward trend of the resource sector and I noticed some negative news on it on October 23 and it escalated the fall. Is there any hope for this security?

Dennis

Q: Hi Team. Just a general question. What is the relationship between share price and net asset value of companies? Is book value and net asset value the same? Some companies trade at multiples of book value. Thanks for the help. Joe

Q: What caused stagflation in the 1970's? Do you think we are at risk of stagflation again?

Thanks,
Hans

Q: I'm fairly well diversified with your model portfolio stocks but I do take on some fliers for some spice. I see you occasionally sell down on stocks that go up and buy up on stocks that are down. I think you do this for companies that you rate as good investments only. My question is does this strategy apply to more speculative stocks as well. I guess in my mind I view these speculative ventures as a partitioned subset of my portfolio. For example I'm well up with Concordia CXR but I'm down with Questor QST, Enterprise ESI and C-Com CMI. Should I sell some CXR and buy some of the others? Or should I just leave these all alone as speculative ventures that were one time good ideas and sell when I think I've had enough keeping in mind reasonable weighting.

Q: To what degree do you expect tax loss selling to impact these stocks in the next 6 weeks: Enterprise Group, Surge and Auto Canada.
Also, I noticed a few stocks (EH and ACQ to name two) that had a great year in 2013 and had a significant selloff in January 2014. Is there such a phenomenon as tax gain selling, where investors hang on until a new year to defer capital gains for a year. If so, do you recommend waiting on some of the years big gainers as late January may represent a better entry point.

Q: I would like to share my personal experience with Raintree financial solutions to add more info to Shirley's question. I have been an investor for 3 years and it has been a disaster. If you want to sell an investment it may take up to 1 year and they will charge you up to 20% to sell. Also one of my investments has a "cease trade order" placed on it, by the Alberta Regulators and for over 1.5 years I have not been able to do anything with it. I agree with the 5i comment that the risk/reward is very poor, and the liquidity when you want to sell is horrible. I am a high net worth investor, and consider myself to be a sophisticated investor, and I will never invest in this type of investment again. My strong advise is to stay away. If you go to the info sections they will only give you all the positives and dismiss the short comings of these investments. If you are looking for some Alternative type of investment I suggest you look at some of the good hedge fund companies. I have invested with Barometer Capital, DKAM, Agilith Capital or Picton Mahoney and these are high quality companies that have much better liquidity and long term track records.

Darcy

Q: If I hold ZUH in an investment account(non-RRSP or RIF) am I correct in assuming that the U.S.withholding, tax which is minimal on a $0.11 dividend,is the only detriment in holding the above ETF outside a registered account? Thank you. Don.

Q: Greetings: Do the Canadian banks buy "blocks" of stocks and bonds for a later sale (at a profit, of course)to clients with managed accounts? If a bank's wealth division offers to manage an account for 1% what other "hidden" costs are there? Thank You

Q: My question is about portfolio diversification. Is there a dollar value of a portfolio in which you might invest more than one company per sector to reduce company risk while maintaining diversification? Thanks!

Q: Hi 5i team, your answer is very very helpful to lead us to become an investor. In the past, you have trimmed AYA as it gained quite a bit. Is there any rule , when and how much, behind such trimming process?

Q: Hi Team,
Can you give me 3 to 5 names (or more) to watch that you would consider buying after tax loss selling in December? Or is it too early to narrow down at this time?

Thanks, Shane

Q: Good Morning, Peter,

How will the planned changes in June 2015 by the TSX affect a typical Canadian investor with a portfolio of less than $1 million who trades equities about 10 to 20 times a month?

Reuters reported that the TMX "...wants to introduce a "long life" order type on both its main Toronto Stock Exchange and its sister venture exchange which will be executed ahead of other orders at the same price..."

Thank you in advance for helping clarify the impact, if any, that these changes will have on the average 5i member.

Gail