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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: HI 5i team, recently you mentioned couple companies with a growth rate of 50%. Do you mean revenue or earning or some measure ? Will you please list top 20 Canadian companies with such growth prospect. Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by victor on July 09, 2019
Q: Hi

My question is about structuring and managing a portfolio across multiple registered and unregistered accounts. Please forgive if this question has been asked before.

Between 4 family members (including two young children) we have 11 trading accounts on the go, including 5 unregistered (3 Cdn and 2 US), 2 tfsa’s, 2 rrsp’s, and 2 resp’s. My approach to date has generally been to try to diversify within each account and try not to duplicate between accounts, with an eye to overall diversification.

This results in three problems (at least): sub-optimal diversification within and across accounts, too many holdings (which are difficult to monitor) and a low average $ value per holding. For example, 11 accounts times ten positions per account is 110 holdings. As for low value, a 10% holding on a $50,000 registered account is $5,000, which represents only 0.5% of an aggregate $1,000,000 value (example).

I have been thinking of treating all of the accounts holistically rather than individually while accounting for tax considerations of course. My goal is to try to get the number of holdings down to 20 - 30, with an average value of 3% - 5% of aggregate portfolio value. I find the main difficulty to be in structuring the lower value accounts.

Two approaches I have been mulling over:

1) Scrap the individual account diversification approach and perhaps only hold 1 - 3 positions in lower value accounts. This approach would probably mean that no account on its own will be diversified but the aggregate portfolio will be (hopefully).
2) Try to maintain the account diversification approach by investing in only one etf per account until the account eventually reaches a size sufficient to hold more positions (then I suppose the approach would flip to the first approach). The idea being that each account would hold a different etf (and at least be somewhat diversified) that would contribute to the overall diversification of the aggregate portfolio.

Do you have any comments or guidance on managing multiple accounts? How do investment professionals manage their own family accounts? Any best practices that you are aware of, or good articles that you can direct me to? Any considerations besides tax; for example, how do you apportion risk between family members and accounts?

Thanks
Derek
Read Answer Asked by Derek on July 05, 2019
Q: Peter, do you think the Bank Rate will change on July 10th? Do you know what the consensus is?
Read Answer Asked by stephen on July 04, 2019
Q: The Canadian dollar has risen two and a half cents against the US dollar in the last month or so. Is this likely to continue? Should I be thinking about transferring into hedged ETFs for American exposure?
Read Answer Asked by John on July 02, 2019
Q: Hi Guys,

If one believes that the Canadian dollar is about to strengthen over the coming year, what are good ways to take advantage of that?

Am I correct in that my non-hedged ETFs such as VGRO and XAW would come under pressure? Are there any companies that would meaningfully benefit from a stronger Canadian dollar?

Read Answer Asked by Michael on June 20, 2019
Q: We have( for me) a quite large sum of money invested in managed products. Any new money is going into Canadian equities ( 30%) following your portfolios and a mix of ETF roughly
30% USA at 10% SPY, 10% VIG, 10%IWO
30% International currently VE
10% emerging currently VEE
( I know "where is your fixed income" you ask, my spouse has a federal government pension which I count as our fixed income)
To date these sums are relatively small. As I start to shift large sums from our managed products to my self managed portfolio ( following the above ratios) I am ok with the mix in the USA spread to 3 etfs run by 3 different companies. With the international and emerging I am a bit concerned about putting all that cash with one fund (and company). Is this concern silly or should I have some diversification within my ETF holdings ( both in terms of funds and companies). For example instead of having 30% of my holdings in VE I would split it 15% VE and 15% XEF. So I guess the short questions are:

1. What is the max an investor should have in any one ETF( %)
2. What is the max an investor should have with any one company ( $ or %)
Read Answer Asked by Tom on June 12, 2019
Q: Hi Peter and Ryan,
The US market has not done well in May and may get worse due to the trade war with China. The volatility of the market increased significantly. People also talk about a possible recession. I am a long term investor. I have some cash available now. I am a bit hesitant to invest in either US or Canadian market, as the two stock markets are somehow connected. Do you think I should wait a bit or invest in some attractive stocks after the recent market drop? What are they if you recommend the latter?
Thank you,
Yiwen
Read Answer Asked by Yiwen on June 04, 2019
Q: My Question is on General market conditions from Technical point of view

Its seems looking at the technical charts for $INDU (DOW index) it has formed a TRIPLE TOPs with divergence in RSI and MACD with lower lows at each tops and $INDU now breaking off 200MA and from todays action its seems $INDU may run down to 20,000 or even 18,000 unless it jumps back above its 200MA
5i expert comment on this please
Read Answer Asked by Francis on May 30, 2019
Q: Is portfolio balancing different than averaging down? I will be doing my semi-annual portfolio over the next couple of weeks and with the decline of names like MG, MX and TSGI to name a few I suspect I will be a bit underweight in consumer discretionary and materials. I see portfolio balancing as shoring up the laggards and trimming the overweight (winners) but that means buying stocks that are not showing momentum and may even be in continuing decline. So, are these two ideas incompatible and if so, what is the "proper" way to rebalance?

Appreciate your insight.

Paul F.
Read Answer Asked by Paul on May 28, 2019
Q: With all signs pointing to a long US/China trade spat, what sectors do you see holding their own. I would expect that Tech and Consumer Products will be hurt the most. Your comments would be appreciated.
Read Answer Asked by Donald on May 23, 2019
Q: Peter and those surrounding - as someone with 25% cash due to recent trimming I'm wondering 1. whether you believe the downside is close to bottom or not 2. whether you would wait for further clarity before redeploying 3. whether you would redeploy the growth names on my buy list first (down more) or stay conservative with more stable lower valuation equities being re-purchased first and 4. any general remarks you might offer at this rather confusing moment in the markets. Thanks as always - Ken
Read Answer Asked by Ken on May 14, 2019
Q: Are there ETF's out there that employ both Active and Passive investing under one roof, or do I have to buy one active and one passive to create my allocation to both strategies ?

Read Answer Asked by darcy on April 22, 2019
Q: I have significant USD in my RRSP in cash. Do you have any recommendation for a balanced USD ETF even if it’s trading in the USA that is “low” risk conservative and might expect 4 to 5% annual gains? Thanks. Peter
Read Answer Asked by Peter on April 18, 2019
Q: I am interested in what your general guidelines for sector percentage allocations would be at this time and looking forward in 2019. We are retired with pensions ,investments in registered accounts and a balanced approach investor. Second question-your recommendation re percentage allocation Canada/US investment. Thank you for your assistance.
Read Answer Asked by Elizabeth on April 16, 2019
Q: I almost only read questions related to my specific companies. So may be I have not look in the right place. My question is at this time in the Market cycle, would you recommend allocation changes and also increase cash somewhat?
Read Answer Asked by Pierre on April 16, 2019