Investment Q&A

Q: Peter
I sent question earlier with a URL to access a "Free" look pdf of quantitative Analysis on how Investor behavior timing the market & selecting advisors whose primary aim is not their client, gives poor results.

The URL got hashed up pretty bad.

To find this PDF put "QAIB.COM/public" into google. The second item you get has a tag headline Freelook pdf. If you click on it
you will immediately get a popup banner at the bottom of your screen asking if you want to open or save. Either way you can save it.
Sorry for the miscue, but it is worth a read. They analyzed a ton of data on mutual fund in & outflows to assess how investors & their advisors performed.
Regards
Ernie

Q: Regardng Mike's question concening monitoring holdings, RBC Direct Investing has a tab which will give you the dollar amont and the percentage of portfolio for stocks held in all accounts. I find this quite useful. It doesn't, however, have the stocks categoized in sectors. But, for no cost it is a pretty useful tool.

Q: Re: Mike's question regarding portfolio consolidation – Publish if you think it will be both useful and comprehensible !

I have found a couple of things helpful to monitor our 8 portfolios (TFSA's, Rif's, RSP's, Unregistered accts).

1. We use TD's Webroker and in addition to the formal individual account information it reports and updates daily, it provides a Portfolio Management feature that allows you to manually set up your own portfolios. Other brokerages may provide the same. This is useful, not only because you can set up a consolidated detailed portfolio (not provided by TD in their formal reporting) but also because you then have access to additional reporting analysis that is not available on the formal individual account detail provided by TD. Once these portfolios are set up, providing you are not a frequent trader, they are easy to maintain – just have to enter in buys and sells as they occur. I have set up one portfolio that is a consolidation of several individual ones, to see the overall picture of all accounts. I also set up individual portfolios which mimic the individual formal TD accounts in order to take advantage of the additional analysis info available through the reporting features.

2. Unhappily, however, the reporting does not (in my opinion) provide a good analysis feature for sector weightings . After (finally !) paying attention to Peter's repeated insistence that sector weightings were critical to successful investing, (Thank you, Peter !), I searched for software to provide this but with no luck. So, I had to bite the bullet and set up a custom spreadsheet to give me this information . I download each account direct from TD Webroker (they provide this capability – I assume other brokerages do, too) . I then determine which sector the stock belongs to (I use a total of 11 sectors and give each sector a number). I have a column in the spreadsheet where I put my assigned numerical value for each stock as well as a column that shows the name of the sector. Using the sector identifier, I have programmed the spreadsheet to then calculate for each account what the total weightings are for each sector. Weightings could also be calculated for the total of all accounts but I don't bother since as long as each account is weighted appropriately (I do some variations, depending on what goals I have for that account), then that's enough for me. This was something of a pain in the neck as it has been a good number of years since I have worked with spreadsheet software, however, now that it is done, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to download and to adjust, if new stock buys/sells have to be sector categorized. I do it on a weekly basis to keep up-to-date . It has made a BIG difference in my ability to keep on top of things in a time efficient manner.

Q: Hi Peter & Ryan
You may have seen a quantitative analysis of Investor Behaviour's contribution to results, along withAdvisor contributions. A sample pdf here:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qaib.com%2Fpublic%2Fdownloadfile.aspx%3FfilePath%3Dfreelook%26fileName%3Dadvisoreditionfreelook.pdf&ei=mSJNU6SKEKep2gXCoIHwAg&usg=AFQjCNFwWBetw8xOGdROK8RQS4BwUts0Hg&sig2=-lpwYJX6Bs3EFHAV-aUgvA&bvm=bv.64764171,d.b2I

It is a long read but makes many good points which appear often in your Qs&As with quant backup. It has a soothing tone.

Post to view at your discretion

Regards
Ernie

Q: Hi Peter and team - can you please comment on using stop-losses to lock in dividends on etf's such as CDZ, XEI or even stocks such RY (RBC). My thoughts are that I would be happy to continue collecting the ~4% dividend on $100k invested and lock-in breaking even if the stop-loss was ever triggered. Pro's, cons and risks of this strategy? thanks for a great service... Al.

Q: A response to Mike's April 15 2014 question about monitoring several portfolios. I suggest that he look at Quicken Home and Business – the Canadian edition. The Canadian edition will only operate on the Windows platform.
Once accounts are set up, Quicken easily updates prices and provide several ways to evaluate portfolios.You can view any number of portfolios in any combination or altogether. By adapting Quickens “Investing Goal” feature you can also review portfolios by sector weightings.
Quicken can be quirky and if you are not going to enter transactions regularly it's probably not worth the cost or effort to learn it. I would give Quicken a B+ with a C+ for customer service. Other than using Quicken I have no relationship with the company.

Q: A follow up to Paul's. I find it difficult to monitor overall weightings is there a software to automatically update and consolidate multiple portfolios. I am trying to load my families 7 portfolios with some common shares.
mike

Q: Regarding your report card in new reports. If this is still under development, could you please use different colours for us old folks, perhaps black on white or white on black

Q: Questrade
Dear Gentlemen,
Not a question, only information, to follow Mr Jeff
"A reason to NOT use ....Questrade"
As Jeff, I have almost same problem with Questrade, tax slips (T5,T3) are all mixed, some revised or modified (?) 2 times, some 3 times, I was lost with all these changes, even the Kind Questrade agent who try to help was mixed up too. we spend 46 minutes on phone together to try to setup Questrade mix up.
I am still waiting for another to be corrected T5
Also the tax receipt for MY Resp contribution to wife account was on her name !
Except agent Mr MB, the customer service is terrible.
After the tax season I will transfer all accounts to another broker.
Best Regards

Q: A reason to NOT use Virtual Brokers: When I complained that they had posted 18 T5 slips for my account as opposed to the one T5 in prior years, I got this response-

"Virtual Brokers has changed its carrying broker and, as a result, has become responsible for all administrative tasks including the issuance of tax statements. For this reason you may have noticed a difference in the presentation of tax statements this year as compared to prior periods.
We have posted a T5 for each individual holding which produced income throughout the 2013 tax year per the regulations imposed by CRA."

And to finally imply that it's all CRA's fault and out of their hands! TD and Scotia had no trouble summarizing all dividends into one T5 for me. So easy to blame CRA these days!

Publish only if you feel this is instructive. J.

Q: Where and what is this "5i Report card" a few members have recently mentioned? Have I missed it or does it go by another name?
Thank You

Q: I am wondering if 5I has a mandate to educate readers as to make report cards themselves, or to teach us to start to do some of our own research. Say which websites to use , etc.

Q: Would you mind if I was to email CBC's Marketplace and suggest to them to do a segment on the fantastic service you provide for Canadians in the investment arena. Normally their shows deal with rip-offs and the like but I bet they would like to do a "positive" show once in a while that provides an alternative to what else is out there for investment advice.

Regards

Q: Hi, I also love the new 5i report card that was added; gives great insite into how you are evaluating the company in an easy to see format.

Can you comment on the following: I don't see a "current valuation" row, which is interesting to me. I think it is fairly consistent in you guidance to look for great companies and focus less on day-to-day gyrations; however, do you not look at that at all in these ratings? For example, you recently mentioned that you don't consider CGI (gib.a) a great company but it is very cheap, so may be considered. If you did a report card on CGI, this wouldn't be reflected in the report card, would it? I guess I'm thinking of the situations when the market may be mis-pricing valuation of a company in your view; however I suppose this would mean the scorecard would have to be updated fairly regularily for each company.

Thanks so much for your service.

Q: Feedback on report format enhancement: the new ACQ report has a new 5i report card on the left side of the page. What a terrific addition to provide us folks with a quick snapshot of the company, and your analytical process. All in all a very nice value added piece. Thank you.

If possible, it would still be a big help for sector balancing activity to know exactly which sector you see each company fitting into. Could this be done, for example, in the white bar at the top of the page where you have ACQ all by itself?

I fully expect future MBA programs to be teaching case studies featuring 5i . In your short history thus far, the growth process, the continual fine tuning, new enhancements and high quality customer service are so impressive and should be an inspiration and superb example of "how to grow a new company" to budding entrepreneurs.

Best wishes for your future success.

Q: 5i Report Card - what a great addition!

Q: Hi Peter & team, I always find difficult to remember the company name associated to a symbol. If possible, when answering a question could you please make sure to use the company name in your answer. This would be easier to read, and would avoid the need to search for the company name associated to the symbol used in the question. On the other hand, it would be great if everybody would do the effort of using both the symbol and the company name when asking a question. Thanks, Gervais

Q: Hi Peter,

How come you do not have any US stocks on your recommended list.

Paul

Q: Looking at reallocating some cash in my RRSP to stocks in the Model portfolio. Was wondering if you expect some downward pressure simply due to the "sell in May" phenonema. i know over the long term it probably doesnt matter but short term Would I be better of waiting a month or two for a better entry point.

Q: good morning,
could you clarify joe's april 9 comment regarding having your broker "journal" inter listed stocks from Can. to US listing and then selling to raise us funds? Assuming the stock performs flat over the holding period, does this circumvent the bank charges that your would normally incur if you just bought us funds?

Thanks,
John