Investment Q&A

Q: For the question on what to buy a child that will get them interested in stocks.

I was introduced to stocks at an early age (mom worked in the bond market). Some of the best stocks i was introduced were:

Macdonald's, Coke, Nike, Apple.

If you can link to something they see everyday it has more meaning (at least it did from my perspective).

Cheers

Q: A member asked who was trading PHO at the end of trading on Friday. In your reply, you observed that TD and Anonymous were, respectively, a major buyer and seller. This same sort of topic pops up on stock discussion boards. My question is: what do traders/investors who seek this sort of information get out of it? What possible significance can there be to which brokers are on one or the other side of a trade?

Q: In view of significant price changes in the last half hour of trading should I as a small lot retail investor avoid trading during this period? Thank you

Q: Could you recommend three recession proof sectors and three stocks in each of those sectors in both the US and Canada. Thanks

Q: Big volumes on many stocks today.
Big volume trades on opening & close. (market makers?)
Is it funds fixing their holdings re changes to index last week?
Several blue chips had volumes over 10 million today.
It is a Friday and the 15th, does that have any significance?
Your expert opinion please.

Q: Hi 5i, I need some guidance, I need to sell some of my stocks.
In my cash account I have 25 stocks , 15 of them are doing OK (some are doing great), and around 10 are in the red (with 3 or 4 bad -at least temporarily ) , the question is, would you sell the top ones, would you shave off some from the top stocks, would you sell the ones that are not doing so well. I understand your respond would be a suggestion only. I'm inclined to shave from my top gainers and sell the bottom ones.
Thanks

Q: Hello, 5i's sector classification for NFI is Industrials. However, when I look at either the TSX classification or the Company profile (5i Research) or Yahoo Finance, etc., all of these put NFI as Consumer Cyclical. I understand it could be difficult to classify, in that case would you advise to defer to the TSX classification? Thanks, Gervais

Q: Acronyms and anything else that is not clear, a quick search of Google usually solves the wondering. I am amazed at how much I don't know about the business of the market and navigating it. A useful site for other newbies is
https://www.stocktrader.com/free-education/
Thanks 5I and other helpful people.
Peter

Q: Could I suggest questioners avoid (or explain) unusual acronyms if possible? When I read the recent question about CSU I thought it odd that the chief operating officer would suffer from Anti Social Personality Disorder!!
Thanks for your very valuable advice.
Chris
PS It took me a while to discover that ASPD really stands for Automatic Share Purchase and Disposition agreement.

Q: In regards to the member looking for USD stocks and preferred shares. CIBC publishes a report on Canadian prefs each quarter(I've linked one for example page 27). The only issuers are Altagas and Enbridge

https://www.cibcwg.com/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=56632e8f-3032-4033-9dbb-38354e4253a9&groupId=82580&version=1.0

Q: hello...I puzzled why income stocks are rising, aka increasing stock price. For example, Bell is nearing an all time high, even in the face that interest rates increases are likely to slow or halt. And all of this is happening while balanced stocks are providing guidance of reduced margins as you highlighted in todays' market update.
Does the increase in prices for income stocks reflect a market change in sentiment to income portfolio type equity positions?
For an individual investor, are there for example indices or ETF that could be followed to monitor such changes in the stock market?
This is all triggered by the rise in Bell's stock price. I'm not overweight Bell but because of the rise in price, I'm wondering if is has topped and for this reason, should I trim and take profit?..........Thanks....Tom

Q: Is there a publicly-available list of Canadian stocks (including preferred shares) trading on the TMX in US dollars?
Thanks!

Q: I have heard anecdotally that the quants, computers, algorithms, etc. are responsible for a large portion of stock trades in today's market. Sometimes "experts" say that these automated systems exacerbate stock price moves to both the upside as well as the downside. Shorts sellers seem to have the power to punish stocks that get to ridiculously high valuations. But what tool does the market have to reward stocks that have been overly punished, other than time and the management taking the time to talk up their stock. An NCIB seems to be kind of an incremental way to support share price and I believe (correct me if I am wrong) that a company has to apply for an NCIB which takes time. Should stock exchanges give some new tools for companies to counter act a sharp downward share price movement? If a company has a strong balance sheet, let's say net cash positive, perhaps they should have the option to buy back large amounts of stock on short notice when the quants, computers, automated trading etc. drive prices far lower than they should go. In this scenario companies that are prudent financially could take of advantage of a Dec 24,2019 incident. In these situations a company could say to the market," If that is how little you think of our shares we will gladly buy as much of it back and send them to treasury, thank you computer traders, thank you computer trading, thank you ." I am not in the financial industry so I may not understand the big picture. This is kind of a long and complicated question so I am not sure if you can answer it without writing an essay.!!

Q: Gentlemen Good Morning,
In response to Eric concerning the CSU dividends.
At National Bank Direct Broker the told me ''The dividend is paid in Canadian dollars by our Security Guard, so there would be double conversion in the U.S.''
Its the same for OTEX, Brookefield family, FNV.
But for MX & MG NBDB paid in US but the they must in US account.

Q: Greetings 5i Team,

I am currently in the process of transition our holding from growth focused to income focused. This has been a much more painful exercise than i had every anticipated: 1. As a long time growth investor i have not paid much attention to the income market and the learning curve is big. 2. I struggle with maintaining diversification across industries as i look toward dividend growth and high yield stocks. 3. i am having trouble giving up my growth bend but knowing that we will need the income from our large portfolio starting in 6 months. 4. Don't have a good sense of what the makeup of my portfolio s/b going forward. right now i am about 10% Bond, 15% preferreds and the rest in dividend payers (some growth some high yield) I have yet to find a resource or web site that provides independent advice on how to make the transition. i am also having a difficult time assessing risk of some of the income plays (for example MDIV) Anything you can recommend. I expect i am not alone out there.

Thanks as always

Q: Hi Everyone at 5i! I was notified that I can participate in a class action lawsuit against Concordia. Is all the palaver worth it in your opinion? Cheers, Tamara

Q: how do I access Peter's webinar of March 6th, 2019 on SmallCap Power?

Thanks
Scott

Q: Hi 5i team,
Some time ago, I bought CSU shares (thanks to 5i) on the Canadian exchange. I transferred them not so long ago to my usd account in order to receive their usd dividend in usd. To my surprise, I still receive it in $cad. My understanding is that I am getting slammed twice by the bid-ask conversion exchange rate.
I contacted my broker who answered: that it was either a CSU ou compensation chamber’s decision to pay the dividend in $cad to CSU’s shareholders, and that they were converting the amount in usd because the shares were in my usd account. I then contacted CSU: who promptly responded (thank you) that they were paying their dividend in usd out of their usd, and also that they had nothing to do with the american listing (pink sheets)(Is that the problem?). I understand that there are many/several large TSX listed companies paying usd dividend (algonquin, brookfield among others). So my case or CSU’s case is probably not unique. My question is: what should I do in order to receive CSU’s dividend in usd? I would appreciate to get an answer specific to my situation, not a generic answer. I understand that getting to the bottom of this might take time/effort. There is no hurry, my timeline is: several days before the next dividend payment in April in order to have the shares in the right account for the next regular and special dividends.
Thank you for your collaboration,
Eric

Q: When selling and wanting to retain dividends for the next future dividend payment, should I sell on the 'ex-dividend' date or on the 'record' date?

Q: A two part question relating to reading financial statements.
1. I'm looking for annual Free Cash Flow. For some companies (US) this is stated explicitly as a line item on the Cash Flow statement. For others it's less obvious. BAM, for example provides Net Cash - Beginning Balance, Net Cash - End Balance but also Cash from Financing Activities. Is one of these meant to be Free cash flow? If so, which one?

2. My second question is more about financial statements differing depending on the source (RBC/SA/amigo - [https://amigobulls.com/stocks/BAM/income-statement/annual?t=ibc]), again BAM will be my example using equity differences from 2018.

I've found some differences in results of equity estimates between RBC and amigo and am not sure why, as I presume BAM files once and everyone uses the same data.

As an example using 2018 data:
RBC amigo
EQUITY 29,815 97,150

Why would the be so different, and which is correct?

Thanks,

Cam