Investment Q&A

Q: What could President Trump do after January 20th that would cause a Stock Market Crash

Bob

Q: Indications of a .5 point reduction in interest rate on Wednesday. If materializes which sectors would be a positive. I am thinking of investing in dfn and enb. Your thoughts

Q: Not a question. I saw Rajiv's question today inquiring about "any statistical data on the Santa Claus rally."

(Hopefully this is an appropriate thing to share on here.) There's an account on twitter by Wayne Whaley (@WayneWhaley1136) and he regularly posts statistical data studies on the US markets. I don't have a twitter account, so I just take a look via a google search occasionally for fun. I do recall seeing him tweet Santa Claus rally specific statistical studies in the past, including last Christmas.

Q: What Companies or Financial Instruments to you suggest buying in preparing for the event of a Major correction ?... - I know long term planning/holding will average things out with certain holdings... But...

- I'm basically asking for your thoughts to protect a portfolio in the event of a Major correction, without having to wait 3-4 years for things to bounce or grow back...

- Please Suggest An Insurance Policy or Ideas ( Stocks or Investment Instruments) of sorts to invest in...Other than a diversified portfolio...

- I know Insurance costs money, But what do you feel are good investments for risk at this point to protect our money and investments?

Thanks,
M

Q: Hello 5i team,

I was wondering if you have any statistical data on S&P, Nasdaq performance for a week or two after the Santa rally? To confirm the Santa rally should end two days of trading in the new year?
Regards

Q: Hello Team, It seems to me from reading the odd comment that you are not very keen on buying the TSX hedged US securities in their Canadian listing and currency and prefer to buy the corresponding security on US exchanges in their original US listing and currency. Can you please explain the reason? Thank you.

Q: My question is on trimming winning stocks. You will often comment on this question that it is about the size of the stock in relation to your portfolio. I have a number of stocks that are half positions which are up 100-200% so now are almost full positions so I don't "need" to trim them. But I'm often tempted to trim at a new high to take some profits with the idea of re-buying on a pullback. I realize this is market timing so I hesitate, but I've also seen thousands of dollars disappear on a downturn. I have bought some stocks I think of as longer term trades so I have sold them after a profit and it has felt good to cement that profit so to speak. But some stocks like Apple, or BN that I see as more core holdings -with these type of stocks do I trim or just leave them, let them run and buy more on a pullback with new money presuming I have more. Any further articles on this would be appreciated as well. Thank you!

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 ?