Investment Q&A

Q: Peter and team
I sold off all my equities part way through this recent collapse.
I have followed your BPort, along with some picks from the GPort.
I do not have the time to diligently follow individual stocks anymore, and was thinking of switching to ETFs.
What are your thoughts about splitting some 400k in cash between ZCN,ZDV, and ZUE. Is there too much overlap in the two Canadian ETFs, and what are your thoughts on going with the "hedged" ZUE?
This is a non registered account. I am pretty sure that ZUE is treated as a Canadian Equity with no foreign withholding tax. Correct?
Thanks

Phil

Q: Hi Team, My friend was convinced to buy this fund. What can you tell me about its performance, distribution, cost on closing the position & management fee. What better alternative can she consider as first time investor? Exchange traded funds?
Thank you

Q: I have my registered accounts with a broker RRSP and TFSA. They have suggested Manulife Global Balanced Fund, managed by Mawer. Please give me your opinion on this fund. I am not sure that is what I want, but would like your opinion. Could you suggest something better for both a RRSP and TFSA.
Thank you so much, Shirley

Q: Hi there, I'm new here and joined after hearing great interviews on Build Wealth Canada. I have a question and am really hoping you can help. I have decided to invest in Asset Allocation ETFs. 60% equities, 40% bond. For both the equity and bond portion I would like equal split of Canadian, US and international (no emerging markets, developed markets only). I need one asset allocation ETF with dividends or interest to buy with my TFSA & RRSP accounts. I need another with no dividend/interest to buy in my non registered account. I am new to this and overwhelmed with how to pick the 2 asset allocation ETFs for me. Can you please recommend 2 that meet my needs? Thank you so much!! Deborah

Q: What would you buy for my child's RESP who is 11

Q: Hi 5i, We hold 6% of our portfolio in this fund which has done OK and provides nice monthly income. It's our last remaining mutual fund. Any suggestions on how I could replace it with similar ETF(s) and still achieve a decent yield and some growth. Monthly distributions are not necessary. Thanks for your help.

Q: Hello,
I'm considering buying the Edgepoint Global Growth and Income fund, however the MER is very expensive series A at 2%. This would be a 25% holding in a LIRA account. I like the set-up income distribution with 70% global equities and 30% bonds. Can I please have your opinion on this fund, and could please provide the names of any alternative funds/etf's with a similar structure.

Thank you,

Glen

Q: Re article in today’s National Post re ETF of ETF’s, no ticker symbols were included. Can you provide same and indicate your opinion on general suitability and if favourable your choice?
Thank you for considering my question

Q: Happy New Year 5i,
Is there anywhere I could get a complete list of the holdings in HBAL, VBAL, XBAL? I realize VBAL is 12,595! XBAL 16,000 plus! I am thinking there might be spreadsheets available somewhere. I am just doing a bit of education with my children and grandchildren.
Thanks
Chris

Q: Greetings

I have a US dollar account with 10% in US cash at the present time. In Canada, I have MAW 104 and like its set up.

Is there a similar US fund company to MAW 104 available or would you suggest just going with a product like VBAL? If VBAL, what is the US designation name for the product?

Thanks

Peter

Q: Hello 5i team,
I'm looking for a one stop global balanced dividend etf at this time, for the next 4 year time frame.
Maybe VGRO, Vbal etc. but not prefered, I'd like about 3% Canadian content in it.
Too much in Canada already.
Any ideas other than balancing MAW120 or XAW with a GIC ladder ?

Q: Would you please suggest 2 or 3 US balanced funds, available in Cdn$ and hedged. Thanks

Q: I currently own 200K in vbal, 200K in vgro, 150K in xwd and 50K in vee, I am thinking of switching out vee with zlu as zlu performs better in the long run and also vee is covered in vgro and vbal.
Thoughts?
Thanks
SF

Q: Having been doing some research on couch potato investing as opposed to me being actively involved.
As such, I am considering VGRO for myself and VBAL for my spouse's TFSAs. 4-5 year investment time frame.
Do you think this a good idea in putting all eggs in Vanguard's basket? What alternatives would you suggest?

Appreciate the insights and information you have provided and continue to provide.

JOhn

Q: Greetings 5i

I continue to focus in on dividend producers that offer security as I enter retirement. At the present time in my TFSA I already have a 20% weighting in VBAL and 5% in XRE. I have another 5% to allocate which will be coming from my sale of BAD as I slowly transition to more security. Which do you suggest as the best alternative? Any other suggestions?

I know VBAL and XRE are very different in context and dividend payout so I need your insight. What I do know is that I’m having a great long ride with Shopify. For that I’m happy not to receive a dividend. Thanks 5i!

Peter

Q: Good morning.. can you please recommend an etf something like NBC7433 - Meritage Global Balanced Portfolio - Advisor Series/ISC .. but with a much more reasonable MER than 2.39% (in addition to a “sales charge option”) ? Thanks!

Q: We just recently were switched from a fund we had been invested since 2002 into this fund in one our RIF accounts, we had to switch or sell. The reason given was to lower the MER which is still a hefty 1.2% in our case the amounts to $1090.92 per year and rising if the fund goes up in value as we have always reinvested the monthly income the current yield is 2.09%.
The fund has been in a trading range since inception from the information I can gather at TD.
My thought is to sell and distribute the money to the either the Conservative or Balanced ETF portfolios in the newsletter which both have higher yields.
I'm not sure what the total MER would be for the ETF portfolios do you have that number available?
Downside is it would double the number of investments in this account to many to follow.
Do you know of other one stop ETF's that are worth consideration as we would like to keep the funds in a balanced investment, we would not intend to use this money for 5 yrs and reinvest any income in the fund.

Q: I realize that there is some overlap between these two funds, but would you say that there is too much, or would they compliment each other, thanks?

Q: For a retiree, does it make sense to invest all in VBAL or might you supplement VBAL with some additional ETFs along with some individual income/growth stocks?

Thanks
Bryan

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