Investment Q&A

Q: Hey 5i,
Despite the downturn and possibly another.
Dividends have been cut and some more are possible. Oil potentially being the longer rebound.
Is their a recommended best "overall" US Dividend ETF.
Overall taking into account Yield. Growth. MER. Somewhat balanced exposure and or limited oil holdings.

Great work as always. Thank you!

Q: Would you please recommend a couple of dividends ETFs issued in Canadian dollars - containing Cdn and or US stocks. The objective is yield more than growth with medium or lower risk. Thanks

Q: Since this ETF holds companies that have been increasing their dividends for 5 years, I am concerned that they will have to sell a bunch of their holdings at a low price if they do not increase their dividends this year. How does this work and should I be concerned?

Q: Hi Peter: When I sit back and take a look at the big picture and review how my portfolio performed during COVID-19 (so far), I try to see what lessons I can learn, then turn to how to apply those lessons to make my portfolio stronger.

I am a retired, dividend-income investor. I am a huge believer in asset allocation and have designed a portfolio, in my opinion, to be reasonably well diversified, although heavy to Canada. It WAS roughly 70% equities (including 32% foreign content) and 30% fixed income (roughly 15% insured annuities, 15% Fisgard Capital...both averaging in the 5-6% pre-tax range and minor cash). My equities are mostly blue chip, dividend payers, as you can see above. The 3 mutual funds are a very minor part of my portfolio, especially Eric's Energy Fund (<2%). I also receive a company pension and CPP-OAS which, when included, drops my equities to roughly 32%.

I use various metrics to monitor my portfolio, such as P/E, P/BV, P/CF, P/S, Beta, ROE, Div growth, Payout%, technical indicators like 200 mda. I am normally a buy-and-hold investor who trims/adds around a core position.

Periodically I measure how "at risk" my portfolio is relative to the overall market. I do this by prorating my portfolio using Beta. Based on equities only, I averaged 0.68 and for my entire portfolio I averaged 0.44. So, one would think that if the overall market (TSX) was to drop 30%, then I would have thought my portfolio would drop 44% to 68% of that, being in the range of 13% (overall) to 20% (equities only).

In actual fact, my entire portfolio dropped 27% from peak to trough vs the expected 13%...over double! I understand that EVERYTHING was sold off...almost no exceptions. So what do we learn from this and what changes should we consider? Do we accept that "sxxt happens" once in a while...you can't predict every event, accept it and move on? Should we consider increasing the cash component as a buffer? Or...is there something else to be learned here?

Thanks for you help...much appreciated...Steve

Q: What are your thoughts on these two etfs for retirement income going forward ?

Q: Can you please recommend what you believe is currently the best Canadian dividend ETF for monthly income and relative stability in this unstable market. You have recommended XEI in the past, but it has about about 11% more Energy stocks compared to ZDV, although XEI does have 5% less financials. I am looking for a long term hold for income in retirement. Thanks, Grant

Q: you recently ranked XEI more highly than CDZ. Could you offer a comparison between the 2? I have read elsewhere that CDZ, which I own, holds too many high yield/high risk
stocks. Would substituting XEI address that, or would it create its own issues?

Thanks

Q: I recently sold CDZ, XEI and ZDV for a tax loss and would like to re-purchased equivalent ETF's. Can you recommend appropriate replacements?

Q: Given the number of companies either suspending or eliminating dividends , would you say the outlook for this fund to be rather weak, for the time being?

Q: Please rank the above ETFs in order of preference for income and safety. Thanks.

Q: Retired dividend-income investor. I'm sitting on 15% cash that I created by taking profits and harvesting some losses. I have mapped out how to redeploy this cash to hit my asset allocation targets, both by sector as well as by individual holding. I had originally designed the re-entry on spreading the purchases over 6 months. Given that we now have information on different countries indicating that they MIGHT be showing signs of COVID slowly recovering and that the stock market is forward looking, would you adjust the 6 months time frame to 4 months? What's your crystal ball tell you...redeploy a little faster?

Also, the above equities are those that are candidates for topping up. Which would you hit up first?

Thanks for your help...Steve

Q: Given that the CDZ ETF holds companies with a 5 year record of raising dividends, I am wondering if there are going to be very many left after this crisis. Best case scenario I think for most companies would be to hold their dividend due to the uncertainty. That leaves a small universe of possible companies to hold and may lead to concentration in Banks and Telcos, maybe pipelines. Any comment?

Q: Good morning,
This past week, I've been reviewing each holding in my Non Registered account to identify suitable tax loss harvesting candidates. Before selling any of these tax loss harvesting candidates, I must identify the best proxy replacement.
One my tax loss harvest candidates is XDV which I've held for many years now but like so may other stocks and ETFs these days, is now quite underwater. Although I still like XDV as a core holding and it pains me to sell it, I'm looking at selling XDV and purchasing CDZ as a proxy. Your thoughts on this tentative plan would be appreciated along with any other proxy that you would consider more appropriate. Thank you.
Francesco

Q: Hi 5i - I have 5% cash left and was thinking of allocating it to CDZ - it yields 5.8% and is it would be a 50% gain if it gets back to its highs. I know dividend paying stocks have taken a beating, but does this seem to be an excellent long term investment? Thanks, Neil

Q: Good morning,
Is there an ETF of big cap Canadian dividend stocks equivalent to PDC but without the large energy component? On the other hand, have the pipelines in PDC suffered enough that I shouldn't worry about the energy component going forward.

Q: Retired, dividend-income investor. I currently own ZLB (RRSP, max'd out), XIT (RRSP-TFSA, max'd out), ZRE (Cash, 3/4 position, will add to over time), ZWC (Cash, close to max'd out). I also have some legacy positions in RBF1018 (RBC Cdn Equity Income-D...MER of 1.0) and CIG50217 (Sentry Cdn Income...high MER), both of which I have averaged roughly 7-8% return over the last many years, prior to this crisis. On top of the above I own AD, AQN, AW, BCE, CSH, CM, FTS, NTR, NWC, RY, TRP, WSP in various amounts to achieve my overall asset allocation targets (not to mention my fixed income portion of my portfolio.

I normally like to run a concentrated portfolio of around 20 positions, composed of +/- 6 ETF-MF and +/- 14 stocks. I have mapped out the use of my current cash (15%) into monthly repurchases over the next 6 months. My question relates to the combination of ETFs, but focusing on ZWC. I own ZWC for its high CC dividend, but recognize that the upside is potentially limited in a recovery. Also, when mapping out spending my cash, I reach an uncomfortable level of too high an allocation per individual stock. That led me to consider adding another ETF. I looked at several, and filtered them down to CDZ, XEI and XDV. I have chosen CDZ as my candidate to add. Looking under the hood at the ETF holdings, they appear to not overlap too much with my own individual stocks.

Do you like this strategy? Does it result in a significant overlap in stocks, held either individually or within the existing ETFs?

Thanks for your help...Steve

Q: Hi folks, I would like you to reco some good dividend ETFs in the Candian space that you think are potentially a good buy for now. By 'good', I meant the company should have solid fundamentals, and the price should be low so the yield is high. I do not expect the US tech to boom forever, I would rather reap my 7 to 8% percent and hope it last forever. Thanks :) Tony

Q: Retired dividend-income investor. I currently own ZLB (in RRSP, max'd out, love it) ZRE (Cash account, purchase for LT hold-distributions, plan to add to it over time) and ZWC (Cash account, purchased for LT hold-dividends).

I have a sizeable capital loss in ZWC....2 choices. #1 = Keep it, top it up over the next several months. #2 = Sell it, save the capital losses for future years (don't need them for 2020) and replace with either CDZ or XDV. I flushed XDV right away due to the very skewed asset allocation (to financials & utilities).

So that left the comparison between ZWC and CDZ. Their metrics are, for the most part, similar (beta, P/E, P/CF, ROE, MER).

ZWC is down 39% YTD, pays a current yield of 11%, has a reasonable asset allocation (the 22% energy allocation initially may seem high but might be good for the eventual rebound). However, I don't have the knowledge on how the Covered Call part of ZWC may impact the comparison with CDZ.

CDZ is down 43% YTD, pays a current yield of 6%, but has a slightly more diverse asset allocation and has performed better than ZWC over a 3 year period, but has a higher Beta.

I entered the comparison exercise believing I would conclude to sell ZWC. Now however I might just periodically top it up. Your thoughts please?

Thanks....Steve

Q: Dear 5i
I'm always a little confused as to which companies are CDN hedged and which are not . Just because it's listed on the TSX doesn't` always mean that it is hedged I'm guessing . I'm also assuming that it looks like the CDN dollar is going to be weak compared to the US dollar for awhile .That being said which of the ETF`s listed above are CDN hedged and is it wise to have a balance of hedged and unhedged anyways ?
Typically you expect share prices to rise as earnings increase . With the state of the economy ie covid19 it is likely that earnings will be lower for the next couple quarters at least so there are few expectations for higher earnings from most companies .Given this , would you expect the market to rebound higher even before there are rising earnings simply on the anticipation that higher earnings will eventually happen once covid19 is proven to be under control , or do you think we would actually have to wait for increased earnings to occur before we would see any meaningful bounce in the markets ?
Please deduct points appropriately .
Thanks
Bill

Q: My wife has this mutual fund with a 2% MER, very little growth and a small dividend. Would you kindly suggest a couple of replacements (ETF or Index fund or Mutual fund) with a similar risk level and sector coverage but without the high MER.
Many thanks