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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: I have been happily and successfully managing my own investments for 15 years primarily with the help of independent analyst services such as 5i (Thank You). I have always dedicated 5 - 10% of my portfolio to small and micro cap investments and met with great success until recently. The last two years I have seen really poor results from my small/micro cap investments with several big losers and none of the big 2, 3 or 5x winners. IOM is the latest kick in the head for me. I am finding that these sudden big losses stick with me emotionally more than they used too, probably because I am now fully retired and the absence of earned income is pushing me to a more conservative approach. Accordingly I am considering revising my strategy away from individual company investments and simply buying a good small cap and/or micro cap fund or ETF. Could you please comment generally on my strategic thinking here and also suggest some ETF or funds I might want to consider. Low Management expenses preferred of course.
Read Answer Asked by Morgan on March 15, 2018
Q: Could you please explain the term "weighted alpha" in the context of tracking and assessing a stock?

Thank you,
John
Read Answer Asked by John on March 15, 2018
Q: UNH.us has been doing well. I am reluctant to trim but to avoid personal bias I ask:
Is valuation now too high? On price to Free cash flow, it looks expensive vs. history. s PEG is ~2 but ROE looks attractive at ~24%. Is such ROE sustainable given competitive forces at play ... I worry its moat is now not good as it was in the recent --- am I wrong?
Do you think UNH will GROW its dividend?
Is debt manageable?
Read Answer Asked by Adam on March 15, 2018
Q: Good morning Peter, Ryan & Team,

I am looking at my international and american exposure. Can you give me a rough idea about what percentage of companies in the balanced portfolio have american and international exposure and how significant it is? Does that typically play to your portfolio country allocation? For example, I have 20% american equities, but X percentage of Canadian equities from the balanced portfolio get the majority of their revenue from the US, would you consider that a (20 + x) american exposure?

Thanks for your time,

Wes
Read Answer Asked by Wes on March 15, 2018
Q: My question is about how to manage the bond/ fixed income part of a portfolio. I have read that bonds etf are not as effective as stocks etf.
For a 5-10 year time frame, would you either invest in a mix of bond/pref etf (CBO/XBB/CPD) or in a actively managed fund (for example a pimco product) ? I was considering mixing the 3 etf + PIMF (a pimco etf). PIMF seems to expose the portfolio to products that are not available in the other ETF (like mortgage based security). Could you comment on a strategy?

I found bond investment way more complicated to understand than for stocks (yield curve, increasing interest rates, variety of products that are available). I'm also a member of your ETF newsletter. Any other comments or references you could suggest,
Read Answer Asked by Olivier on March 15, 2018
Q: Hi, could you offer any advice on CHIP program or reverse mortgage to release funds to seniors wishing not to downside, thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Peter on March 15, 2018
Q: I realize these are different companies and somewhat hard to compare. I am down 24% on UNS, and since I am looking for growth would you hold or switch to SJ? Is there anything else that you would recommend irrespective of risk/industry?
Read Answer Asked by JR on March 15, 2018
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