Investment Q&A

Q: The CAD continues to weaken against the USD. Interest rates are declining in the US so I’m not sure why the USD is so strong. Trump’s tariffs are thought to be inflationary so possibly the market is already anticipating higher interest rates. Typically I am fully invested. Trying to decide if I should sell a portion of my USD stocks like NVDA to raise some cash. I agree that the tariffs are coming in spite of what we Canadians do to secure our border. May I have your thoughts on the USD and the tariffs?
Thanks,
Jim

Q: Everyone, what is the one risk that you are spending the most time on right now? Clayton

Q: Is it time to take some profits from the market?

Q: I have a very novice question. When people say the market is "overvalued" or "high" how do we know that? Do we look at the P/E Ratio?

Can you provide a bit of insight on this? Thanks.

Q: I am thinking of moving all my equities into ETFs. Would now be a good time to do it, or should I wait until March or so?

I have no tax benefits from doing it now. I feel that the US general market may be a bit inflated right now due to the US election euphoria. I also feel there could be some tax loss selling with certain stocks (like BCE), due to time of year. This could result in my selling my stocks low, and buying the general market high.

Could you please comment on this?

Thanks.

Q: Hello 5i staff
I have a portfolio consisting in a few etf’s and a few stocks for the American side. One of these is a small cap etf. On the Canadian side it have mostly large blue chip stocks. CSU, BNT, etc. These are mostly at the full 5% quota. I keep some of these smaller stocks, I suppose because I enjoy winning. The problem, though, is that I hate losing. I keep the amount of these smaller stocks small because of that fear of losing, I suppose. They are often between one and two per cent of a fairly large portfolio, which is low percentage wise, but still quite high dollar wise. I am an advancing senior with moderate risk profile. Have a modest pension, which allows us mostly to live without touching investments. I have been wondering lately whether I should just bite the bullet, take the risk and add more to these fast growers ( and from time to time, fast losers) or whether I should just sell them all and consolidate in the larger stocks and etf’s. especially since I can say that I have won the game? Perhaps I could keep a few for fun. But, I guess that is what I am doing now. I know that you cannot give personal advice. But, I find that you usually have interesting things to say about these kinds of situations. As well, it has been cathartic and possibly helpful for me just to frame the question.
Thanks for all the help you offer us

Q: I’m hopeful that 5i can help with sector rebalancing in our combined accounts. Portfolio Analytics currently indicates that Technology is now 20.85% of our portfolio, but recommends a target of 16%.

Of course, this is due to 5i’s recommendation of CSU, which in turn led to positions in LMN and TOI. We’re certainly grateful for this!

In addition to the three stocks cited above, we also have positions in these ETFs, followed by the percentage weighting in the Technology sector:
XCS - 4.68%
VEF - 10.37%
VFV - 33.77%

Is this overweight position in Technology something we should be concerned about? If this was your portfolio, what would you do? We are seniors (76 and 81), and both of us have defined benefit pension plans.

Thanks as always for your insight.

Q: Is there potential in this stock?

Q: We export 4,000,000 bls of oil a day to USA A 25 % tariff will increase the price of Gasoline by 25 Cents a Gallon . Americans do not want this.

The 25 % tariff is just to get our Governments attention to Pay the 2 % to NATO re Defense and Shut our Borders to Drugs and Illegal. Not a bad idea . We have to work at this .

We will have a Free Trade Policy with USA by January 20th 2025.
We will go it alone with no Mexico in our agreement
Trump needs us ,

Trump says he wants the KEYSTONE Pipeline to be built RAK

Q: In a best case scenario, I think 4 years of Donald Trump in power will be chaotic and discruptive in the US and globally. In a worst case, I believe the US is heading for internal unrest/violence, and the certain parts of the globe will be at war. If you were a 74 year old investor who has done well listening to 5i the last 2 years, how would you now hedge against these scenarios?

Q: Hi 5i Team,

It seems like your current view, including from your monthly commentary, is that small and mid caps are continuing to look attractive and the forward returns are historically attractive after past US elections. With this in mind, something I struggle with is a large proportion of my portfolio is in large cap stocks, including 10% of my portfolio in NVDA. A lot of this is due to the strength in large caps since 2022 and my bias has been to continue to hold them at a higher percentage as they have provided strong returns over the past few years. Although, these large caps, including NVDA continue to grow and execute my feeling is that I should trim stocks like NVDA down to 5% and use those excess proceeds to invest further funds into small and mid caps to potentially capitalize on the large gap in valuations between small and mid caps and other tailwinds like declining interest rates. For a growth investor with 20+ years of investment horizon would you recommend going the route of trimming NVDA and other large cap winners to a 5% portfolio weight and re-allocate into small and mid caps?

Thanks as always,
Jon

Q: Do you think with the big rise in the TSX in the last couple of days that it is getting a bit frothy, and perhaps it would be a good time to trim and retain some cash for a pullback? Do you expect a pullback between now and the end of the year?

Q: Shall the BRICS reorganisation against the US dollar and/ or the wars (Ukraine, Middle East) affect the North American stock markets ?

Q: Regarding potential Trump tarrifs, do they apply to services also or only goods?

Do you see any of the companies (DRX, CLS, BN, PRL, Hps.a, ENB, Shop,.... ) affected by this?

I have gains on most of them. Would you sell right away and buy later,.depending on market outcomes?

Would you have a different strategy for stocks that I plan to sell in 1 year vs 5+ years?

Q: In your answer to Shirley on Nov. 22 you wrote, "We think investors can position a portfolio more conservatively by raising the allocation to defensive names that emphasize downside protection with good upside potential." Can you give a list of 5 CAD and 5 US stocks that you think would fall under that statement?
Thank you

Q: In this morning's Globe and Mail David Rosenberg made the case to move into cash in an article titled "It's time to move into cash. Even most bonds and commodities have become too risky". What do you think of this strategy?

Q: hi. this "question" section seems heavily populated with the latest/greatest growth stocks-ie tech, AI, crypto etc. Can you provide some insight on where you see value outside of these frenzied trades? can you include comments on 1)regions - Canada, USA, Europe, Asia, China, emerging markets etc. 2) industry 3) small vs medium vs large cap.
cheers, Chris

Q: Hello Peter and team, With the Trump cabinet taking shape do you now consider healthcare stocks (and EFT's) as well as renewable energy stocks (and ETF's) as dead money for a few years or do you see some exceptions in either domains?
Thanks for your always good insight and analysis.
Adel

Q: Now that we’re closer to world war 3 should we go to cash? How do markets react during times of world wars?

Q: With tax loss selling for this year, are there any stocks, Canadian of U.S that you would consider worth buying for a bounce next year?
Mike