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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: A member reported difficulty purchasing OTC:VWDRY at TDW. I, too, have mostly given up on ordering over-the-phone. However, the member should be able to purchase VWDRY via WebBroker; indeed, when I enter the symbol in the order form textbox, WebBroker autocompletes the company name. The only obstacle is the omission of price data, but that's available at OTCMarkets (which, when I've asked, has been where TDW's phone brokers got their information, too.) Perhaps WebBroker added this symbol to its database only recently.
Read Answer Asked by John on February 12, 2021
Q: Hi Peter,
I have a portfolio of CND stocks, AT, EGLX,ERO,WELL,KRR.XBC, and a portfolio of US listed stocks, DCBO,CRWD,FUBO,MITK,LSPD,PINS,KL. I am comfortable with my holdings and dont plan to sell in the short term. Based on the context of my portfolio, should I decide to hedge my portfolio by buying HUV:CA, as rule of thumb, what % of my portfolio would you think would be adequate to hedge without having to highly dilute my overall returns. I hope I am making sense with the question I am asking.
Your assistance is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Read Answer Asked by ilie on February 12, 2021
Q: Hi, how often should we look to high grade our portfolios? For example, in many questions you rank stocks and today in a previous question you ranked these stocks in the tech sector - CRWD, NVDA, TTD, SHOP, LSPD, TEAM, KXS, PLTR, TOI, MITK, DOCU, AVLR.
If I currently already own SHOP, LSPD, KXS and DOCU, should I look to high grade from DOCU/KXS into CRWD/NVDA/TTD since these should show higher growth? Can you shed some more light around your process and how we can best manage quality in our personal portfolios. Thanks!
Read Answer Asked by Keith on February 11, 2021
Q: Hello 5i,

Thanks again for your services. As a novice investor I am feeling a little antsy as some of the stocks Seem like they have the potential to double, for example acb. Almost all of my portfolio has been built off of your models or suggestions. I am thinking long term but want to be on top of things. Would your recommendation be to sell winnings if I see a stock double? I also have some funds sitting as cash at the moment, and i am hesitant to buy in yet. Do you think it is smart to wait a bit for things to cool?
Read Answer Asked by Ellen on February 11, 2021
Q: I hope you can tell members how you prioritize questions sent to your Member Questions service .
This may help members to structure questions in a way that makes them more efficient to deal with.
It seems questions about a company in the news get answered almost immediately. News such as Takeover announcements or quarterly reports are answered on the day of the news or very soon after. I understand that you try to answer questions within 3 business days but within those 3 days does length of question, complexity, staffing, affect response time or is there a hierarchy or some other priority system in place?

Thank you
Frank
Read Answer Asked by Frank on February 10, 2021
Q: Hi Peter, Ryan and Team,

I was wondering about cash positions. Should cash positions vary depending on the type of account you have (RRSP, TFSA, non registered accounts, RESP) and should it be looked at as the whole portfolio?

For example, with a RESP, the window of investing is about 18 years, should you be fully invested in stocks all the time to maximize growth, with a minimal cash position. Whereas with a RRSP/TFSA, you have more time and you can adjust the cash position based on your risk tolerance.

Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Marvin on February 10, 2021
Q: I just want to clarify your suggestions for starting position and maximum position for individual stocks in a portfolio. From context it appears that 2%, 5% and 7% and 8% in your following answer from some time ago relate to percentage of the equity portfolio only, not the total portfolio which includes fixed income and cash. Can you confirm that these percentages do in fact relate to only the equity part of the portfolio. I mean, I may veer from these, but I like to have some idea of a norm so I know how much I'm veering. The extract of your answer I'm referencing is:
"What the right size of a position is comes down to some personal factors but we think a minimum, 2% position is a good starting point. This would lead to an average portfolio of 50 securities, which is a bit high in our view but at least manageable. In terms of maximum allocation, we would tend to target a 5% maximum starting position and look to rebalance as positions drift higher than this. At 5%, you would have a portfolio of 20 holdings which allows diversification but each holding contributes meaningfully to returns. We are fine letting big positions run to 7% and 8% ..."
Read Answer Asked by William on February 10, 2021
Q: How do you feel about buying odd numbers of shares? ie. 1 or 2 shares of Google or Amazon. Does this present a problem when selling?
Read Answer Asked by Steven on February 10, 2021
Q: As a follow up to my previous PL question. I don’t want to sell to early or waste time on a stock that has stopped it’s dividend and will be flat. When should we know that know one else is coming in to raise the bid or that the offer will be raised.
It’s sounds like the big shareholders are on board. Thank you for your timely advice.
Read Answer Asked by mike on February 10, 2021
Q: Hi !

I have more of an investor psychology question.

Let's say I am interested in an initial investment in a company such as WELL which saw a nice move upwards recently. I find that after a company moves up I am strongly resistant to investing in it. I pretty much "won't" do it. There are many examples where the error of this mentality has been shown.

Would you be able to suggest a mental strategy so that I feel okay about investing in companies that have spiked?

Yours kindly,
David
Read Answer Asked by D on February 09, 2021
Q: Do you know how a Canadian can go about moving Bitcoin out of cold storage and sell-it? I found no Canadian institution that can do it, only two small companies. After what happened with Quadriga, I don't want to use small private companies with little history. Thanks!
Read Answer Asked by M on February 09, 2021
Q: I have to change some C$ to US$. I have two options one is to buy US $ outright or move some of my ENB to the US non registered account and sell to get the US $ i need. It looks like I could save a couple of % points by doing that. I was going to sell some ENB anyways as I'm a little overweight on it. Do this sound like a good way to raise the US $ I need?
Read Answer Asked by Greg on February 09, 2021
Q: Guests on BNN's Market Call often tell a good story but I wonder exactly how well they perform overall. They use different metrics to evaluate companies and I am curious to know which systems work better. Is there a website that reports the actual results of the various investment firms?
Thanks for the great service.
Ian
Read Answer Asked by Ian on February 08, 2021
Q: Hi Peter,

Thanks for the good work you do.
One suggestion, could you have a section where you post 10 stocks for say
1. Top Stock Picks
2. Safe stock picks
3. High growth Picks
.....etc
Read Answer Asked by HARRY on February 08, 2021
Q: In your last weekly update there was an article that talked about a potential fraud in Bitcoin trading. The fraud is with trading platforms that use Tethers. Can you please give me your comments on this article? Is it possible that Tethers used in trading bitcoin do not have the value that Tether claims? Any and all comments are welcome.
cheers, Darcy
Read Answer Asked by Darcy on February 05, 2021
Q: I often see small trades in securities - just a few shares or so. Do traders/investors make small purchases - either up or down - to give others the impression a stock is either rising or falling? If so how widespread is this practice and how effective is it?
Read Answer Asked by James on February 05, 2021
Q: Good morning. Some time ago I bought AMCI (a SPAC) in anticipation of its merger with Advent Technologies. That merger has now happened and Advent is now trading as of today in the US with the symbol ADN. Will my broker (RBC DI) automatically change my shares from AMCI to ADN? So far nothing has happened. I know I could ask RBC but the wait times are over an hour! Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by David on February 05, 2021