Investment Q&A

Q: After Hours Trading Question: Perhaps you could educate me with respect to After Hours Trading. I have seen many examples where there have been trades after the close that have radically altered the 4pm closing price in one direction or another. However, in many cases where this occurs in the absence of news, it is being done with as little as one share changing hands. What would be someone's motivation in leaving investors with the impression that their shares have exploded or imploded after hours, when this is clearly not the case?

Q: I saw in a recent question there is a way to "Ledger over" CAD to USD to save on FOREX. Can you explain the steps to do this? I'm with TD.

Thank you

Q: Morning gents. Can you please explain or provide detail on why one would purchase a US listed stock (eg: NTR, BAM, WCN) vs. the same Canadian listed stock. I assume that payment of US currency dividends is one reason but are there others? Where best to hold US listed stocks from a tax perspective (registered or cash account)? Truly a great service. Thx. Steve

Q: Greetings,

I am getting close to retirement so starting to shift my portfolio to get a better balance of income and growth. Is now the time to start looking at preferred shares of companies that appear to be fully priced. For example, BAM. A appears expensive but the preferreds esp the perpetuals, BAM.PR.N appear cheap on a relative basis. I already own BAM.A but wanting to keep for the growth but want to add the Preferred to get more income. Does this seem reasonable given where the preferreds are currently trading.

thanks as always for your advise.
k

Q: Not a question but in your response to Helen on 9 December, you incorrectly indicated that she would pay a total of 10% commission. While you multiplied the commissions by 10, you forgot to multiply the stock purchases by 10 hence the error. Her total would be $100 commission on $10K purchases or 1%. Happy Holidays.

"If your trading costs are $10/trade, we would first consider these, for $1,000 in 10 stocks would be 10% in commission in total. "

Q: I seem to recall that you have recommended good books for newish investors to look at but could not locate your recommendations. Perhaps you could list a few that would be good for young investors just getting started.

Thanks, Bob.

Q: What is the typical year-end behaviour of investors, such as tax loss selling? Do investors take profit of high P/E or high flying stocks to cover losing stocks? Any other typical trend/behaviour? Thanks.

Q: Tagged this question to SYZ but it could apply to any listed situation. I'm looking for some trader perspective.

SYZ is relatively illiquid, TSX Venture listed and spreads between bid & ask sometimes wide. Not certain but think the market maker is Haywood brokerage house #62. Normal Course Issuer Bid is in place and I believe BMO brokerage is conducting that.

Recently I looked at live quotes showing visible market depth. Bid was small volume at 9.59 and small (but larger) offered volume at 9.68

I entered a buy order with volume size that would have taken out all of the visible offered at 9.68 and a little more up to 9.69.

My unsolicited limit buy order completely filled. Price received was better than the limit order price entered and midway between visible bid/offer prices on market depth.

Live quotes for trade history did not print the sales at either the TSX site or on Canada Stockwatch live trade prints. I do not know who buying brokerage was.

Live quotes after the done trade still showed same bid/offer prices and sizes on the depth of market.

Detailed long-winded description. The question -- Can you provide some background color on how some trade prints show up immediately while others (ie. above description) seem to be invisible. Just curious and trying to understand the behind-the-scenes mechanics of trade stuff better.

Q: Just a comment.
You suggested that the payment for the sale of drg.un will be imminent.
Bank have a habit to keep money as long as they can, institutions will probably be served first, your member (and me for that matter) will be lucky to receive the full amount towards year's end.
To speed up the process I have a sale order in the market (my cost: $6.95 to ''liberate'' over $25000) it has not being covered yet....
We are the suckers, retail is always last
CDJ

Q: I recently submitted a question asking what "sector" Costco and Disney were in "according to your sectors". You advised that Disney was Consumer Discretionary and Costco was Consumer Staples.
You do not have these sectors in your listings. You have Consumer Cyclicals and Consumer Non-Cyclicals. I am assuming it is one of these - could you please advise. I am aware that sectors have more than 1 description name but I am trying to keep to the sector names you have on your Summary List.
Thank you so much,
Margaret

Q: dear 5i
can you explain how you access preferblog.com ?
thank you
jacques

Q: Good morning
I own CPD which has trended downwards in price over the last year and is now yielding 6.9%. I am considering selling CPD for tax losses and if so, what would be a more sensible strategy. Buy back into CPD after the appropriate delay or Buy something else like a blue chip equity. I know the legal difference between preferred and common but it seems that over an extended buy and hold, commons will prevail albeit with dips along the way. In reality how often are preferred rights called into play to the detriment of common with Canadian blue chips? To me, preferreds offer the worst of both worlds. At this point, my CPD shares are part of my fixed income side and a switch to equities will rebalance things, I know.

Q: My bank is the Royal and, when I buy a GIC through Direct Investing, they list several institutions offering such fixed income at the rate those institutions currently offer. However, if I go directly into the website of these other institutions, I find the rates they offer are slightly higher than what is available through Direct Investing at the Royal. My question is this..... Is the Royal taking a "finders fee" or "management fee" when I purchase a GIC from another institution through their Direct Investing? I hope I have described this situation in a clear manner for your consideration. When I get my annual year-end tax reports from the Royal, they do list an obscure "management fee" against my GIC portfolio. Thanks!

Q: I will probably be purchasing ZIN shortly. Regarding the quarterly dividend, does it matter when I buy ZIN? I know the Ex div date is Dec 27, so I need to buy it before that, so it settles prior to or on Dec 26. And theoretically in an efficient market, the price of ZIN will drop the amount of the dividend ($0.13) on that date. What's your experience...does the ETF share price drop actually resemble the dividend amount?

Thanks...Steve

Q: Hello
I would appreciate a link for some info on growth, value and momentum strategies.
For a long time-frame investment with high-risk tolerance, which one is more suitable?

Q: When buying a thin trader such as FSV,
Do you recommend putting in a limit order rather than a market order?
Thanks
Karim

Q: Good morning Peter, Ryan & team. I've been seeing the term Repo market in the financial headlines of late and don't understand what part of the lending / debt process it serves. Can you enlighten Me in a couple of paragraphs as to why I should be concerned with This? Thanks david

Q: Along with iTrade, I have other accounts with another institution with a broker. With my RRSP it has been converted to a RRIF and this institution once it goes into a RRIF, if you sell a US security, it is converted to Canadian dollars and then when you want to buy another US security, you have to convert Canadian dollars back to US dollars. Is this common practice? My wife being a few years younger than me, I was thinking of taking her US securities out of her RRSP at the same institution and transferring them to her TFSA at iTrade. If I were to take $25,000.00 US out for example, could I replace it later with Canadian dollars? Would I be able to transfer it from this institution to where my iTrade account is or would I have to open a TFSA where the RRSP is? Thank you. It is nice to have this type of advice. Well worth it. Thanks Dennis

Q: Thank you for posting the model portfolios. I had to comment. Sometimes customers will complain about a stock pick or two, such as COV or, more recently, NFI. But with the income portfolio up 15%, growth up almost 31% and balanced up more than 20% this year, I really do not know what they are complaining about. Keep up the good work.

Q: A bit of info re: Alex's question about selling Canadian gold coins. Current 1 oz coins are .9999 percent gold and the banks will buy them. The coin will marked with its purity. Older coins were minted to only .999 percent purity and some banks (at least TD) will not accept them. Those need to be sold at a "cash for gold" place, in which case, definitely shop around for pricing.