Investment Q&A

Q: Which are presently your top picks for Canadian and US ETF's for each sectors ? Which ones would you consider buying now ? Entry prices ?
Please take as many credits to answer this as required.

Gratefully,

Jacques IDS

Q: Is XIT worth holding? Or would one be better off just buying the top 3 holdings in equal weightings. For CDN tech, what would be the best buys today for the long term?

Q: My mortgage is coming due at a much higher rate than it has been for the past 5 years, so given the current economic uncertainty, I’ve decided to sell half of my unregistered portfolio to pay it off. I understand this will incur tax, and I’m prepared for that. Here are my holdings—please advise on the optimal order of selling to ensure the remaining portfolio is defensive, particularly against tariffs and economic uncertainty. I'm open to the cheese slicer method across some or all stocks. Please deduct credits as you see fit. Thank you!

Q: Besides IGV (US) and XIT (CA), can you recommend any other software ETFs ? Any that focus on small to mid cap software ? Thank you .

Q: Hello Peter,
I tried to balance growth and income as well as dividends (no with holding tax in RRSP for US stocks but there is in TFSA), and hence, can you let me know if these make sense for a mid 20s person starting off to have a more growth in TFSA and more income in RRSP.
TFSA: veqt, vgg, and xfn and maybe xic ( veqt has cdn exposure so thought i would exclude xic )
RRSP: vbal, zuq, xic, and xuu all of these trade on tsx. Much appreciated.

Q: Your best 3 choices for both Cdn.$ Tech ETF and US$ Tech ETF.

Q: I have these five ETFs in RESPs for my grandchildren: VCN, VFV, VMO, XAW, XIT.
This seems excessive, so I would like to consolidate: can you tell where there is overlap, and which three I should focus on for the future. Or should I sell 3 and add a new one? Or should I just keep all 5 and top up one of them? They have all done fairly well, but I feel more of a US focus going forward might be appropriate. If I'm gong to have a technology ETF, it should probably be USA? Thank you very much for all you have done for me over the years, much appreciated, and Happy 2025 to all at 5i.

Q: Hi Peter and all at 5i. Wishing you the best of the season!

Peter, first of all, I really enjoyed your last article in the National Post. Your financial stories were highly entertaining.

I manage a RRSP for my daughter-in-law. She has approximately 24K in cash due to a GIC that recently matured. (She got 5.16% interest).

She has these commission-free ETFs: CEW, QQC.F, XHC, XIT, and XST. She would have to pay a $10 commission on the following stocks and ETFs: BCE, BNS, FTS, PBH, SLF, WSP, ZIN, and ZRE.

Question 1. In what order would you suggest she uses the cash to purchase more of the commission-free ETFs?

Question 2. If there are compelling reasons to do so, in what order would you suggest she uses the cash to purchase more of the stocks and ETFs where there is a $10 commission?

I’m hoping that this question can be answered before Christmas if possible. Please use as many question credits as you see fit to provide a comprehensive reply.

Thanks as always for your valuable insight.

Q: Retired (70 yrs old), dividend-income investor. Been meaning to ask this question for a long time. We run a concentrated portfolio of roughly 10 ETFs and 10 stocks, plus fixed income on top. Our pro-rated MER for the equity ETFs is 0.64 and for the entire portfolio is 0.38.

I use the ETFs above that are sector ETFs (like HHL, NNRG, XIT) as my proxy for the sector and am ok with the trade off of paying fees for a sector ETF instead of having lots of stocks.

I then add my individual stock selections to achieve my targeted Asset Allocation for the entire portfolio (like AD, BCE, FTS, GSY, RY, NWC, PBH, TRP, WSP, etc). I weight each of these relative to my risk tolerance.

Does this make sense to you? Does my "sector ETF" make sense, especially with a potentially large weighting in one ETF. Virtually all of my ETFs are capped at around 7% of the equity portfolio and the stocks are capped at 5% max.

Your thoughts on my strategy and on my MER....thanks...Steve

Q: Can you share your top picks for Canadian and US ETF's that would cover the relevant sectors (e.g. tech, industrials etc.)? Please take as many credits to answer this as required.

Q: What 5 market industry sectors do you recommend for investing in now, ranked in descending order, in the USA, for ETFs that will yield 10% per year including both dividends and capital appreciation please? Same question for ETFs in Canada please?

Q: Hi team,

Could you suggest a growth portfolio of EFTs for a TFSA, with an indication as to the degree of risk for each ?

Is it a good idea to have a TFSA all in ETFs ? Or what kind of mix (ETFs and stocks) would you suggest ?

Gratefully,

Jacques IDS

Q: Help me!
My wife and I have a competition running in our TFSA accounts, which we started a few years back with the same cash balance. She is using the classic passive ETF strategy, except we got pissed off with bonds and moved that portion into QQQ/ICLN (TDB900, 902, 911 & QQQ, ICLN)
I am actively (quite low turnover) trading CDN and US stocks and ETF's
She is handing me my ass!

My current holdings in the CDN account are ATS, BAM, BN, GSY, KXS, XIT, PBH, WELL, WSP and US account AAPL, TFII, VEEV

Ignoring sector allocations (which i still need to look into), please advise any Buy, Hold or Sell recommendations for my current holdings with a 5 year horizon

Q: I am pretty close to full positions on LIFE, XIT and XST. Also, I am sitting on <5% cash, being basically fully invested. Over the next few months I plan to top up these 3 ETFs.

In what order would you add to each of these 3, based on their current valuations, compared to their historic valuations as well as their potential?

My thoughts were LIFE, then XST, then XIT (although I suspect your order would be XIT-LIFE-XST). Please include a brief "why".

Thanks for your help...Steve

Q: Good morning
these three ETFs have stellar one year performance to January 6th according to your March issue of Money Saver magazine. Do you see them topped out for the present or would you still see a buying opportunity here
GUY

Q: With the goal of adding good quality growth stocks and using your suggestions ( thank you ), some time back I added BN and GSY to my cash account which is full of telecom, pipes, banks and utilities. I am now looking at these four with my thoughts on them : EQB, Stephen Smith is the main reason I am liking this company . I am overweight banks already- should this factor into the equation ?
CALF, the small cap sector should be getting interesting if rates decline and I could use more US exposure. TFII, management can’t be beat but the industry is suffering ( good or bad for TFII? ),
best to wait and see how industry shakes out?
XIT, ( have 10% portfolio exposure with a US tech ETF ) has significant CSU exposure.

Is my thinking clear? Any single addition would be approximately 3% portfolio weighting. In what order would you buy ? Am looking at buying 2 immediately. Any you wouldn’t buy ?
Thanks. Derek.

Q: I know that you still like KXS, and you also like XIT. I manage my son’s TFSA, and he’s made a tidy profit in KXS, since it’s been held for quite a while. However, going forward, and since more recent charts indicate XIT's outperforformance, what would be your assessment of switching from KXS to XIT?

He doesn’t have enough room to buy CSU or SHOP, and I see that they’re the first two holdings in XIT, and would you agree that these two names are ‘better’ than KXS? As well, XIT holds a small amount of KXS.

Finally, he can buy and sell XIT with zero commission.

Your pertinent advice is, as always, important in our decision making.

Q: Can you please suggest a few ETF's for a young investor who has recently opened a brokerage account.
My 30 y/o son will be transferring funds currently held at his bank. (TSFA , RESP, RRSP accounts) He is looking for long term investments options.

We as grand parents have started a RESP for each of the grandchildren. Looking after their first year RESP contributions. Currently invested in HXS and a small VFV position.
Can you please give some options for :
RRSP
RESP
TSFA
Thank you
Gord

Q: From a value perspective, where the current price is compared to it's historical price range and it's future potential, in what order would you add to these equities (NTR, FTS, XIT, XST, ZUT) to reach asset allocation goals?

I understand it is not apples to apples, due to some of the equities are stocks vs ETFs; and some are conservative vs aggressive.

When looking at both the technicals and fundamentals, I would suggest that NTR and ZUT are undervalued and could be earlier purchases, compared to FTS, XIT, XST. Purchases will be spread out over several months.

Your thoughts on the order?

Thanks...Steve

Q: Hello, I have the following in my TFSA: GIB.A, OTEX, NVEI, KXS, DSG, DOL, NXR.UN, with more or less the same weight. I am under water with NVEI, KXS, NXR.UN. Should I just sell OTEX, DSG and GIB.A and buy XIT instead and wait for NVEI and KXS to break even before selling them and buy XIT? I know XIT has 50% in SHOP and CSU and 5i likes CSU very much. I am less sure about SHOP. What is your opinion of SHOP for a long term hold? I did not fully understand their recent change of strategy. FYI, I have US tech names in a cash account, that’s why I am looking at CDN names in my TFSA. Thanks.