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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 heard leveraged ETF’s are not good long term holds. I am looking at QQQ but would TQQQ be fine for a long term investment (15-20yr)
Read Answer Asked by mike on July 20, 2022
Q: For materials sector is FXZ etf a good choice? Is the timing for purchase good right now? Any other suggestions and the outlook for future of this sector.
Read Answer Asked by Mirjana on July 20, 2022
Q: Emerging market indices have been underperforming for some time now and are ostensibly quite undervalued relative to peers in aggregate. I happen to hold a fairly sizeable portion of my portfolio (~15%) in XEC. As such, I am curious as to your opinion on whether or not holding emerging market exposure is a valuable form of diversification in today's landscape. Finally, acknowledging you lack a crystal ball, do you anticipate emerging markets reverting to the mean in the foreseeable future?
Read Answer Asked by Andrew on July 18, 2022
Q: I am a retired income investor who derives all his income from investments. For obvious reasons I am a fan of covered calls and own the various ZWs and HDIV. I also own the canadian banks and ENB. Most of these have held up fairly well in the turmoil. My question is do the covered call ETF administrators try to keep the return % approx level as the ETF value changes. I note that the RBC quoted return for HDIV is noeth of 10% but ZWC is approx 7% which is not much change from where it was in April. Other ZWs are similar. It would seem that BMO manage the return whereas Harvest do not.
Read Answer Asked by Don on July 18, 2022
Q: I hope all is well at 5i and you are enjoying the sunny summer. I wish we had more rain here in Niagara.

Garth asked an interesting question last week which you answered on Friday. He was asking about all-in-one ETFs and specifically such as VGRO, XGRO, ZGRO or HGRO. 5i recommended VGRO over ZGRO with no mention of HGRO.

I did my usual half-baked research (engineer not a financial guy) and found some interesting things using the G&M watchlist plot routines. I just plotted a comparison of ETFs using 1, 2 and 3 year intervals relative to last Friday (July 15th). First, I compared VCNS, VBAL, and VGRO. To my surprise, the worst performer for each relative time interval (1,2 and 3 years) was VCNS and the best by far was VGRO. For 1,2 and 3 years VCNS was -13.4, -7.5 and -3.7% while VGO was -12.7, 2.9 and 5.7% from July 15th). Seems Garth was on to something by asking about GRO ETFs.

Then I compared the 4 GRO ETFs that Garth was asking about. The one year returns relative to July 15th were all essentially the same at about -13%. However, HGRO was hands down the winner for the 2 and 3 year relative time periods from July 15th i.e., 10.6 and 20.5% for HGRO versus 2.9 and 5.7% for VGRO. I realize VGRO has a 2.2% dividend (according to G&M) but not that doesn’t make up the difference. I also realize HGRO is just shy of 3 years history but close enough for me.

Is HGRO doing something with significant increased risk or is something wrong with my research oven?

Maybe an article in your ETF & Mutual Fund Update report would be helpful.

Thanks, as usual.
Read Answer Asked by Danny-boy on July 18, 2022
Q: Good afternoon 5i,

TD has the dividend payments of VIU and VEE respectively at $0.80 and $0.86. Is there a withholding on these amounts since they're foreign or is that automatically built in to the price for share. I'm simply trying to estimate my dividend payment from both.

Why do their payments vary quarter to quarter when other ETF's (e.g. ZSP) keep the same payment rate per quarter?

Thanks in advance. - Jeff
Read Answer Asked by Jeff on July 18, 2022
Q: In order to protect my portfolio from further damage I am thinking about adding ETF which short indexes. How would you consider the above three as short play to recover loss and make some gains. Would you consider any other ETFs?
Read Answer Asked by Numa on July 15, 2022
Q: I'm looking to invest the majority of my money into an all-in-one 80/20 asset allocation ETF, such as VGRO, XGRO, ZGRO or HGRO. Aim is to set-it-and-forget-it.

What does 5iR recommend?
Read Answer Asked by Garth on July 15, 2022
Q: Hello,
I am trying to understand how Horizons S&P 500 Index ETF tracks the index. At the moment I'm typing this message, the S&P 500 sits at 0% daily change, SPY at -0.03% while HXS is at -1.09% and HXS-U is at -1.08%. Why do we see such significant deviation from the index in $3.5B ETF with very high trading volume and close spread between bid and ask? Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Michael on July 13, 2022
Q: I have a question regarding the distributions for XIU, XIC and XAW. According to Morningstar these ETFs are close to 100% equities, yet it looks like interest income can make up a sizable component of the yearly distribution. I would have thought most of the distributions would be from dividends. Any information regarding this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!
Read Answer Asked by Barbara on July 13, 2022
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