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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: As suggested in Portfolio Analytics I need to add Fixed Income to family portfolio. It suggested ZAG or XBB; Defensive CBO or FLOT, Aggressive CPD or ZPR. Which of the three would you suggest to invest in? Also researching them they refer to Dividend Yield. Is it actually dividend yield or interest income? The reason I am asking should the fixed income be in RRSP (I know it is preferable for US$) or would a non-registered corporation account be fine also?
Heather
Read Answer Asked by Heather on April 16, 2019
Q: I have 30% of my money in diversified CDN equities and don't need the money for 20 years.
I am not interested in bonds or REITs. I was considering putting the other 70% in the following ETF's.
45% VFV
18% VUN
18% XQQ
11% XEF
8% VEE
This would put around 57% of the total money in the USA. I am fine with that.
The MER would be around 0.18% based on the blend. I know this breaks your rule of keeping less than 25% in one fund. It also places a lot of money in Vanguard - which has been around since 1975, but nothing is for sure. Wondering what you think of this set up and also maybe I could sub out VUN for XUU. This would make 53% Vanguard and 47% iShares. Trading VUN for XUU would lower the MER a little as VUN is 0.16% and XUU is 0.07%
Read Answer Asked by Terry on April 16, 2019
Q: Hi Gang,
After doing my PA, it says I am short in US holdings and the following sectors; consumer defensive, consumer cyclical, health care and industrials.
Suggestions of your favorite US stocks within each would be great. I don't need the $ for more than 5 yrs, reasonable risk ok. Looking at my portfolio as a whole, I plan on holding these in my RRSP. does that make sense re US tax with holding?
thanks
Michele
Read Answer Asked by michele on April 16, 2019
Q: Hi Ryan i note that you hold nwc in your income portfolio as do I .
My research is starting to indicate a value trap.
Then amount of volume of business that amazon is doing in the high North is increasing ten fold year over year to the point that post office are looking more like grocery warehouse.
Nwc return and sales are dropping faster than once thought.
I have reduced my position my half and am currently considering exiting in full.
It is further exasperated further when grocers in the south start getting government handouts .The competitiveness edge of the high north is disappearing
Kind regards
Stan
Read Answer Asked by Stan on April 16, 2019
Q: If I were converting into ETFs what sectors should I begin with as it may take some time? Thanks
Read Answer Asked by JAMES on April 16, 2019
Q: Hello,
Can you please recommend a Canadian dollar equivalent to the following ETF's: VOX, XLV, and RYT. Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by glen on April 16, 2019
Q: Good afternoon Peter, Ryan and others in 5i
Right now my wife's TFSA is down 20%, trailing 12 months return. In her account, she has BCE 11.19%, ENGH 26.04%, NFI 15.53%, SIS 9.41%, TOY 32.49% and MU 4.71%. TOY is down over 9%. And ENGH, NFI and SIS have all dropped from 33% to 81% from their highs. But she bought these three stocks early. As a result, unlike TOY, they are still in positive positions (unrealized gains). She thinks that in TFSA there should not be any stocks going down so much for quite some time. She is thinking of selling or trimming some of them. What is your option on these stocks? Which stocks should she trim or sell? We are seniors at age of 67 and 69, and we don't need to take money out of TFSA for a long time. Could you recommend a few U.S. and Canadian solid growth stocks for her TFSA? We do need to have some consumer discretionary stocks. Could you also suggest Canadian and U.S. stocks in this sector? Maybe three each?
Thank you very much for your excellent advice all eight years since we jointed 5i.
Jim
Read Answer Asked by James on April 16, 2019
Q: I have owned Nexa for over a year it is down but the dividend is good.
reading td webroker seems like there is extensive positive commentary but I must confess I am not sure if holding on to Nexa is the right thing,
It represented just under 2% but has fallen to 1.4%. Seems like a play on Brazil etc as well as zinc. Should I hold and add to bring it up to 2% or let it go. thanks. it is in an rsp.
Read Answer Asked by Maureen on April 16, 2019
Q: Hi there. In August I became nervous about managing the amount of money I had been and got an investment advisor from the Royal Bank. I then invested half of my savings into their mutual funds. A large chunk of it is in the RBC Select Balanced Portfolio. As this is a mutual fund there is a mer of 1.94%. So question # 1 is: is this a reasonable mer?
I have noticed now that this mutual fund invests in 10 other (mostly RBC) mutual funds. So my second question is: how does this work for the other mers? Who is paying these mers? Am I paying 1.94% plus other hidden fees for the mutual funds within the first mutual fund?

Thanks,
Sue
Read Answer Asked by Susan on April 16, 2019
Q: Revenue seems to be progressing reasonably well for Opsens over the past few years but they still seem to run at a loss. I notice that the number of shares has also increased in the past few years. Two years ago, you reported that the insider ownership was 14%. Is that still the case?
Read Answer Asked by richard on April 16, 2019