Investment Q&A

Q: Hi Peter and team:
My question is about Drips and more importantly discounts on drips. I have had IPL for a number of years, and at one time they offered a discount. I truly believed, and was told that I was getting the discount on reinvestment. My shares are held in my RBC Direct investing account. I now read that this is an Rbc synthetic drip, and the only way to ever get the discount is to hold the shares in your own name. In a RRIF this would be impossible. Please fill me in on my lack of knowledge. Thanks, BEN.

Q: Hello 5i team,
In a recent answer to a question from Tom about conpanies as a possible target to be acquired, you included CXI. I would like to know what characteristics of CXI makes it a potential candidate besides low valuation and cash on the balance sheet? I know the president of CXI has gone through this process before: has he ever mentioned specifically this endgame before for CXI? I would think that selling at this price + premium would be like a failure in the actual venture. And by what type of acquirers? A bank?
Thank you for your collaboration, Eric

Q: My wife insisted I send this to thank you for her kitchen reno. (Lol)

Seriously, though, than you for your hard work and wonderful advice.

Have a merry Christmas and a safe holiday.

Mike

Q: Retired dividend-income investor. For the equity portion of a typical income focused portfolio, can you give me your suggested asset allocation for the 11 sectors. Thanks in advance...Steve

Q: Is ROKU a buy today OR is it too late to get in? I am looking for 1-2 years hold

Q: I read your answers about Topicus shares from the CSU spinout. I have 50 CSU shares, so at a rate of 1.859817814 I would get 92.99 Topicus shares. You can't get any closer to a whole number than that. From what you said the number of spinoff shares is rounded DOWN. So even with 0.99 of a share they won't give me a whole share of Topicus? So I would end up with 92 Topicus shares plus some cash?

By the way, how/why did they come up with such a fraction? Why couldn't they just make it simple: you get 2 Topicus shares for every 1 CSU share (and then work backwards to make the math work)?

Paul

Q: I forget to ask another question about CSU shares. My CSU shares are on the US side of my non-registered account (so that I collect the dividend in US dollars). With the spinout of the Topicus shares are there any ramifications of having the CSU shares on the US side of my account? Will the "dividend" be calculated in US dollars or CA dollars (given that they pay their regular quarterly dividend in US$)? Should I journal the shares back to the Canadian side of the account? If yes, is it too late to journal them back to the Canadian side of the account given that the ex-dividend date is Dec 23rd, and my broker wouldn't complete the journalling transaction until Dec 24th or after Christmas?

Paul

Q: Ah! The magic of compound interest. Be warned I did this by my adding machine. What I came up with:
If you contributed the max. amount every year to your TFSA starting Jan.1/09, & made 10% every year, your total contributions of $69,500. magically became $133,029. on Dec. 31/20.
Almost a double! It will be when you put up $6,000. for 2021

Q: Hi Team,
I would like to send a gift subscription to 5iReseach to someone, and there does not seem to be a link for that on your web site. Just wondering how should I go about sending a gift subscription.
Cheers,

Q: Please provide your top 10 ranked Canadian and US stock that are dividend aristocrats (at least 5 years of increases annually to their dividend or distribution) in the order you would purchase them.

Q: Hi 5I! Two questions here for the end of 2020.

1- LSPD is now a 100% above its pre-pandemic levels with a market cap of more than 9 bln. Share price has doubled in two months. All of this with negative net income, negative net margin, negative ROE, negative EPS, etc... Price to sales ratio is at a astounding 39+! And, a probably decent portion of its customers still on lock-down around the world. I understand growth expectation are high and analysts are pounding the table on this one. The quintessence of the "Recovery" play. But at what point, to put it mildly, can we honestly say the stock is getting a bit ahead of itself? Isn't the downside risk factor growing at a equal alarming pace here, if things don't pan out like everyone expect? Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to have bought the stock back in april. But I've learned over the years to be very careful when things get too easy. My best success in the market have always been acheived on the long run, with lots of patience and when things are boring.

2- FSZ has been trading at a very high yield for a long time now. How worry should I be since the yield stubbornly refuses to return to more "normal" levels. Either the market deeply undervalues the company or it thinks their payout ratio is too high and a dividend cut highly probable. Or, I'm missing something, which is also highly probable. Your toughts on this would be very appreciated.

To everyone at 5i, have a great holiday, happy New Year 2021 and thank you for your great work in 2020.

Q: In our investment accounts, reg and non-reg combined, we have: PSLV @ 3.5%, PHYS @ 3.5%, BCE @ 9.72%, BNS @ 6.6%, KEY @ 3.5% VSC @ 5.7% and ENB @ 6.6%. I have a significant cash balance which is available for the right opportunity. Thus far nothing jumps out as “buy me now”.
We have smaller allocations [2% to 3%] to FTS, MFC, ALA, KEY, SU each and a number at less than 2%.
Given we are retired I’m wondering about increasing some of these allocations on any market general pullback? I usually focus on liquidity and free cash flow as two of my selection criteria as well as comments you make to questions asked of 5i.
Thanks for an advice you can provide.

Q: 1) Is today the 22 of December the last day to buy shares of CSU and get Topicus shares?
2) When do the Topicus shares start trading on the Vancouver exchange? Would it
be on the dividend date Jan 4?
3) The last release said, "the common shares of Constellation will commence trading on an ex-dividend basis at the opening of markets on December 23, 2020. "
Does this mean that CSU will start trading tomorrow at a discount to reflect the Topicus shares without Topicus trading?
Thanks for your great service.

Q: Are you aware of any etf,s that are composed of just rate-reset preferred shares?

Q: What are 5 US stocks you expect to perform the best in 2021? Happy holidays and thank you for the great service!

Q: Hi 5i,
What are your thoughts on SYZ? What has been the track record on the dividend and do you consider this a safe stock or high risk?
Thanks and Merry Christmas,
Earl

Q: I wanted to respond to Roy's concern that the answer I received from TD Waterhouse was a "load of crap " as I believe it could cause a lot of concern among your members that they are being cheated by their online brokers. The best way to do this is with math - Lets say that in total  TD WaterHouse  held 101 shares, split with 19 clients holding 5 shares and 1 client holding 6 shares.  Their total of 101 would be rounded up to 152 shares in the 3 for 2 split and that would be what TD Waterhouse would receive from BEP.  If you look at the clients accounts separately the 19 people would be entitled to 7.5 shares - 7 physical shares and cash for the .5  and the one client with 6 shares would receive 9 shares post split  for a total of 19 X 7.5 + 9 = 151.5 share equivalent in compensation..... So if the total number of shares that the broker holds in trust is an odd number they are making at most .5 of a share - not .5 of a share on each client as Roy implied. As well its the only fair way to treat us. I would be upset if I was the guy holding 6 shares as I am getting 9 shares or 1.5X the number of shares post split whereas if the guy holding 5 shares was rounded up from 7.5 to 8 shares he is getting 1.6 X the number of original shares. Nothing looks deceptive or dishonest to me.

Q: Further to an earlier question, I remained puzzled by HFPC.U. I can invest in it with RBCD and at the moment it's around $5 with volume so far today at a mere 3000 shares. Fine. However, FAH-U-T, which the Globe and Mail database also states as Fairfax Africa Holding is at 4.85 with fifteen thousand shares traded today. RBCD does not recognise this symbol but does recognise HFPC.U. RBCD is proving itself useless at answering my questions. Any idea what's going on? Thanks and season's greetings. Al

Q: I wish to invest in a royalty company. Ideally the material sector, however other sectors would work as well. Please list your 3 top picks for a royalty company. Thanks

Q: I bought LSPD several months ago and so far its been doing great.. We've been thinking about buying more but given the gains already seen do you think there is still significant upside opportunity? How much of the gains do you think are being driven by hype or are the business fundamentals just that good?