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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: Hi 5i,
Just a comment on Nino’s question and your answer about the choice between paying up for a REIT ETF like ZRE/XRE versus holding 8-12 individual REITs. My choice has been the latter and I have been happy with it. Your answer suggested that rebalancing 12 holdings annually would cost $120 at $10 a pop. My experience has been that the reality is much less than that. Because the REITs tend to move as a group more than their individual movements relative to the group, in holding 8-12 decent quality REITs I haven’t had to do more than 2 or 3 rebalancing transactions in any given year. Except for a couple of extraordinary years my REITs have really been low maintenance holdings. Cheers!
Read Answer Asked by Lance on June 13, 2017
Q: VSB looks to include both government and corporate bonds. Is owning VSB the equivalent to owning CBO and CLF? Looking to reduce number of holdings and the MER on VSB is attractive. Is there something similar that includes corporate and govt short term bonds that you like better? Thank you for all that you do!
Read Answer Asked by Pamela on June 13, 2017
Q: I currently have, in ETFs, 20% in U.S. (VTI) and 10% in international (5% in VEF and 5% in VEE). I'm thinking that long term my U.S. and Int'l should be equal weight as one never knows what countries will perform the best. What are your thoughts on this and recommendations? Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by Pamela on June 13, 2017
Q: Greetings, I've always had a bit of a difficult time understanding bond ETF's or more specifically how they may be expected to react to economic events. Some observers interpreted recent comments from the BOC as perhaps indicating they may not be as opposed to a rate hike as they have been for the last 7 years. If rates were hiked even a little in Canada, I assume bond ETF's would react somehow. Does it depend on the nature of the holdings? Or is the underlying reason for the rate hike more important? Could a bond ETF ever respond neutrally (or even positively)? I think I understand how an individual bond reacts, and how if I held it to maturity it really wouldn't matter, but I am thinking specifically of ETF's like VAB and CLF. I would really appreciate your thoughts,
Thanks

Read Answer Asked by Stephen R. on June 13, 2017
Q: I am just getting started (complete newb). I listened to the Building wealth interview podcasts. I would like to invest ~$20k now, via TFSA, then perhaps invest a monthly sum (say $1k). With a commission fee of $10 per trade, how would you recommend approaching this? Would you buy 20 different holdings of one of your model portfolios at ~$1000 each? What would you do with the monthly sum? (I was thinking the income portfolio since I may need to redraw the funds in ~5 years to buyout a business partner).

I feel this question should already have an answer somewhere but I can't find it - perhaps you could link the answer?
Read Answer Asked by Helen on June 09, 2017
Q: Hello,

Can you suggest an etf or stock suggestion to capture the global increase in defence and security spending. Also Trump is pushing hard on G7 countries to increase defence budgets. A lot of money could be flowing towards that sector. Also are these increases already priced in? Thanks. Shyam
Read Answer Asked by Shyam on June 08, 2017
Q: I'm looking for international exposure with more weighting on consumer staples rather than financials, since we have a lot here in Canada already. The best I can find is "ZLI" from BMO. When I look at the holdings, I recognize very little, and am concerned about the quality of those companies. Sure, an ETF is transparent, but if I have no way to "measure" the quality of the holdings, is this transparency useful? Can you help me out with this? Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by Matt on June 08, 2017
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