Investment Q&A

Q: Merchants are now allowed to charge customers a fee if they pay by Mastercard or Visa. I own shares of Mastercard and had been hoping Mastercard would comment on this in their most recent earnings but do not think there was any mention of it. I have already heard from friends opting to pay cash or by debit card to avoid the fee at some fast-food restaurants that have already starting charging. Now I see bigger companies like Telus have announced they will start charging a fee for anyone paying by credit card, so wonder if more people may decide to switch to alternate payment methods. Could you please comment on this. Do you think this could have a significant impact on Mastercard’s business? Thank you.

Q: I know your standard advice in terrible markets is do nothing, but I think I read you advising another member it might not be a bad idea to sell some names like Google and Amazon and buy them back after a month. Isn't this risky?

Q: Hello, thinking of selling these stocks for tax loss reasons (10-15%). Although one would think a very possible recession with the related decrease in earnings is already baked in share prices, I am afraid it is not entirely so. I intent to buy these stocks back in a month, hopefully with a lower SP. Is the tradeoff between tax loss and the risk of share prices jumping much higher worth it? Thanks

Q: Hi there, I’m a big fan of the Balanced Equity portfolio. If you had to create a US Balanced Equity Portfolio using CDRs, what stocks would you purchase to create such a portfolio?

Q: I have held MA stock for 18 months now, it's barely gone up at all and it looks like growth is stalled. Is this worth holding over QQQ or VOO?

Q: CSU and BEP.UN are graded A and are your only A grade companies in Canada. What might be an A grade company from the U.S. if you were to grade?

Thx

Q: I have these U.S. stocks in a RIF (ABBV, CSCO, DGRO ) and TFSA (DIS, MA, GOOG, NVDA) .

Please rate these in terms of safety and growth potential.

Q: We are selling our house and will be renting a condo instead, so I’ll have 500k to put in the stock market. My current portfolio is mainly Canadian dividend stocks and bonds, providing me with plenty of retirement revenue. I am light on non-Canadian stocks and was looking at buying the above-mentioned stocks for a long term holding period (10+ years). Do you have issues with any of these stocks, and if so, what are those? I happen to be a customer/user of these companies, except for PFE. thanks,

Q: Hi, we are trying reduce our Technology exposure in US stocks. These are the companies held in our portfolio, in this sector, with weighting in descending order as follows: AAPL,MSFT,AMZN,MA,V,GOOG,PYPL,NVDA and ISRG.

How would you rank them, Today, based on the current valuation, growth prospects and risk ?

Also, should MA,V and PYPL be considered different than others ?

Thank You

Q: I'm interested to increase my sector weight to financials - and now have BMO,
BAM, MA, and FFH.
Please comment on this mix and whether to add to any of these or add other stocks.

Q: My allocation to financial services - with a RIF (US and CA)and TFSA (US and CA) is under 10 % , with BMO, BAM, MA and FFH.
Please rate these for growth and safety - and whether this is a good mix.

Q: Hi, Technology is the largest weight at about 45% ( even after the recent sell off) in our investment portfolio. Most of these holdings have been down 25-50% from the highs, over past 2-3 months, following the general market trend of indiscriminate selling in High multiple Tech stocks. LSPD and NVEI, of course, saw much steeper losses.
We do have the rest of the portfolio invested in Cdn large cap banks, industrials, utilities and telcos, generating decent dividend income.
We recently retired and as a part of portfolio planning/risk management, would like have a strategy to reduce the Technology weight to less than 35%, over next 2-3 years. The plan could be executed in phases, once the current tech rout is over and valuations have recovered.

From the perspective of risk, growth, stability and valuation, what would be the recommended/desired weighting for each company, balancing these factors. What would you suggest to be order of priority for the purpose of initiating sale of each stock. Also, it would be really helpful, if you could provide a reasonable price range for sale/trimming of these companies, based on price history and future expectation over 2-3 years.

CSU 14.5%
SHOP 9 %
TOI 5.2%
SYZ 3.5 %
LSPD 3 %
KXS 2.5%
NVEI 1%
US Large Cap Tech ( AAPL,AMZN,MSFT,MA,V,PYPL etc) 8% (we want to keep as is)

Thank You for your insight, which we value so much.

Q: I have quite a lot of financials, mostly Canadian banks and insurers with about 20% US. Would like to sell down some and buy something with some more growth in the payment section but still relatively conservative.
Would you recommend one of MA, V, Pypl or other financial as currently looks like a buying opportunity?
Thank you.

Q: Hi Peter and staff, Happy Holidays.

These are my holdings in TFSA account. Can you please suggest two more names, Canadian or US to add for the 2022 contribution.

Thank you.

Joe

Q: I have been hearing regularly BNN market call guest select payment stocks as their top picks over the last month. What is your opinion of these stocks? are they good value right now and do you think they are facing any headwinds?
thanks

Q: I'm interested in the payments/financial services sector...

1. Please rate/rank the following: 1 through 10 if you had new money to deploy in this sector...
- I understand not all the same...
- If any new ideas/companies, please list as well...


2. Who do you think will win the Grey Cup ? Are you doing odds and taking bets with 5i ?? - Sports-book Division in the future ??

Thanks,
Have a good week!

Q: Looking to buy one or both of these companies in light of recent weakness, this would either be for a taxable account or an RRSP (have some room in both for a new position). Would you hold off for now? Which would you buy first and what would you consider an attractive price? Thank you.

Q: Fire sale - V - 13 month low; MA just as bad; along with the rest of these. Do you think the people selling them have knowledge that we do not have and that is why they are selling these stocks. What is your take on what is happening? Thanks

Q: Poor Visa! What are your thoughts? Will other big companies or Amazon North America etc start rejecting visa too? I have been eyeing Visa and Mastercard for a while now. Is this a good time to buy Visa or wait and see if it falls through $190/200? Buy visa or mastercard, or both, or neither?

Q: would you favour V over MA at this point ?...many thanks....cheers