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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: Based on BIP.UN and BIPC performance i'm thinking of switching from BEP.UN to BEPC on the first day of trading. I think July 24th is the ex-date and that BEPC trades on a when issued basis starting the same date. Please confirm. I know there are tax pros and cons but as an investment can you comment on the short term and long term of doing this switch.
Read Answer Asked by Mike on July 20, 2020
Q: I am a retired, dividend-income investor with a company pension, CPP, OAS and some Insured Annuities. I wanted to get your views on our asset allocation. Currently we have the following targets by asset class (in the equity portion of our portfolio):
Finance = 17.5%
REITs = 7.5%
Telecom, Utilities and half of Pipelines = 22.5%
Consumer Staples & Disc = 17.5%
Health = 2.5%
Industrial = 10%
Tech = 10%
Energy and the other half of Pipelines = 10% (actual is 7%)
Materials = 2.5%

While I believe pipelines should be 100% allocated to the Utilities sector, they seem to trade more like the Energy sector...hence the 50-50 split. Also I normally have 20% allocated to the Consumer sector, but we have reduced the Discretionary sub-sector for a period of time due to COVID.

I read years ago that something like 75% of your returns are associated with your asset allocation as opposed to your stock selection. Our portfolio is set up for mostly dividend generation, with some capital growth.

Question 1 = Do you see any red flags with our allocation targets?

When I attempt to replicate the 5iR Income Portfolio into my system, I note 5iR has a significantly higher weighting in Consumer and Industrials...while significantly lower in Health, Technology, Energy and Materials.

Question 2 = Are there reasons for the lower allocation weights in the last 4 sectors...higher risk maybe? I am asking so I can fine-tune my own allocations, which don't change much over the years...maybe 2.5% here or there from time to time.

Thanks for your help...much appreciated...Steve
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on July 16, 2020
Q: Based on your balanced portfolio, which 3 stocks would you be comfortable adding in this environment for a long term hold investor.
Thanks as always.
Read Answer Asked by Kevin on July 14, 2020