Investment Q&A

Q: Hello Peter and the 5i Team,
My wife and I are in a fortunate position to have stable defined-benefit pension plans, but likely have been too conservative in our investing by maintaining a 60-40 weighting of stocks to fixed-income. We were looking at our large holding of the CLF ETF, and calculated an annualized return of just 2.45%. My question is this: What low-volatility equity/equities would you purchase if the CLF shares were sold? I was looking at your recent article that discussed DOL, GS, NWC, NCC.A and ADW.A, but perhaps there are others you could recommend. Love your service; wish I had joined earlier!

Q: hello 5i:
I'm having a great deal of trouble trying to determine the direction of interest rates ie. inflationary vs deflationary forces, and thus some portfolio choices I need to make. Your opinion please.
thanks as always
Paul

Q: Hello to all. My question regards the model portfolio. Could you break down the three main allocations (Stocks,Bonds,Cash %'s) and add any other sectors you would suggest. And also can you suggest a particular bond. Thanks for all your help.

Q: Thank you for your response to my Nucor question, you made a very interesting point, that Nucor will generate $1.4 bb in cash flow this year. I get most of my information about companies through my bank and it didn't have this point. My information seems to be lacking, is there a site that you can suggest that provides better information than a bank?

Q: Hello 5I team, I have a elementary question about the 5i research model portfolio. What do the letters P & L % in the heading mean? I know that "w/div" means with dividend.
Thank you.

Q: Can I please have your best recommendations for parking cash and still earning better than miserable bank term rates? Any specific ETF's that you would suggest for best preserving capital and still earning something? So far I have been reasonably happy with preferred share ETF HPR and the like - I do prefer to go to cash during bear markets or holidays and would rather pay fees and taxes than suffer drastic drops on investments. Thanks

Q: Peter and Team,

I am 30 years old. I currently have 14.6% of invested funds in cash and the remainder is all equities. Of the total portfolio, I have 10.7% in utilities split between IPL.UN (3.2%)and TransCanada TRP (7.5%). With TRP hitting $50 today, I was thinking about switching some of that common stock into the Preferred stock. Can you please give some guidance on the quality of this move and if you recommend a particular TransCanada Preferred or if there is some other vehicle you'd recommend totally?

I am thinking I could use some diversification from common equities but in a general sense, I am scared of buying bonds for a few reasons: I worry that while you may get your coupon, you may get hurt by either significant capital losses or by devaluation of currencies. Because Bonds are typically priced against US Treasuries, I am scared a run on the government credits could put pretty much any bond at risk of big capital losses. Is preferred stock a good way to go?

Q: Hi Folks,

The work that you're doing is brilliant, commendable and an enormous resource. Might I respectully suggest that The Name of Security always be mentioned in The Answers to Questions? For me, anyhow, I don't always recognize The Trading Symbols.

Respectfully,

Dave (Nicholson)

Q: This subscription is our best buy of the year.

Another flash crash yesterday due to high frequency trading.The apologists didn't even clain Fat Fingers this time. Will this perversion of the market place ever be stopped?

Q: Dear Peter: Thanks for being on BNN a few minutes ago. The question is: would you be willing to alert your 5i members when you are going to be on BNN. I would not want to miss an appearance.
Jean

Q: Hi Peter, is there a seasonality in stock pricing? If so, why financial companies seem to have this pattern of peaking at early of the year and bottoming around summer? Should we take this into investing for long term?

Q: I have a question regarding distributions. I have read that funds to pay distributions to shareholders are taken from the price of the stock. This implies that the price of the stock would then decrease by the amount of the distribution. If this is true, it would imply that that there are no real gains from distributions. I would appreciate your input on this. Thank you.

Q: I'm looking at a company that does make large acquisitions, with their last major purchase, they didn't increase their share count of the company it bought. However, this past quarter they have increased their share count of another company by 360%, I would see that as an indicator that they want to buy it, but since they haven't done that in the past, could it mean something else.

Q: Hi 5i Team,

I subscribed to the service, which I really enjoy by the way, in December. I have started to work on building a "5i" portion in my RRSP and TFSA. My plan was to over the course of the year attribute around $3,000 per month to 5i stocks until I have 20 selections. Unfortunately the stocks I have chosen for the last 4 months have performed pretty badly and I am off around 7% YTD. I picked CFN, PKI, WIN and LIQ. My next investment plan is for May. With that said, should I:
1. Take my licks and sell any of the above?
2. Buy more of any of the above to average down?
3. Buy another stock? If so which would be your selection?

Q: You recently answered a question with this comment: We believe no more than 20 stocks need to be held overall. My question is this: Is it considered OK to hold a particular stock in several accounts, e.g. RRSP, TFSA, RESP, non-registered, or should I limit the one holding to one account? If the second option is chosen, it would be tough to limit the number of stocks to 20 or 25.

Q: Can you clarify the 5i rating system (A+, A, etc.). Does the score measure safety, value, or other.

One of the company reports included the following:

"Nothing wrong here, but we are lowing our rating one notch because of rapid share price gains since we started coverage of the company."

This would imply that the rating is value based. If this is correct, would 5i consider using a safety measurement? (Value is very subjective).

Q: Hello,
If you are considering a stock to buy and everything looks good, ratios, growth rate, etc, but the share price has had little movement in the past year, would you still buy it?

Q: Peter,

Just a general question. For interlisted stocks lets say ANV, if there is very high demand lets say in Canada and low demand in the US, what removes the arbitrage between the two prices. I am always perplexed as the volumes in the US are pretty high and is it US or Canada which determines the prices to be followed.

Q: Hi Peter, some stocks have weathered the current downturn well and have generally held their ground. I'm wondering if these are buy candidates because of their current strength. Perhaps they are just a safe haven for now, and could lose value when the correction is over and the money goes to the beat-up stocks. Some examples are MSI, GEI, FCR, TRI, BNP, MG etc. What do you think? Thanks Tim......

Q: Hi team; An advisor (before I knew about 5I) called very enthusiastically telling me about the IPO
for Eagle Energy Trust. Naively, I believed him and he even agreed to my suggestion of putting it into the TSFA. I paid $11. It now ranges between $6.30 and $7.00. It is paying the very high dividend. Recently I found Peter's article about IPO's. I will never buy another IPO. Do these advisors know what they are selling, or are they assessing the investor's lack of understanding just to make money for themselves or to sell what their company (Scotia McLeod in this case) is promoting?
Thanks so much for all the answers you provide.
Jean