Investment Q&A

Q: For investors living on 4% of portfolio income and growth is there any difference between withdrawing 1/3% monthly or 1% quarterly or 2% semiannually or 4% annually or would the result be the comparable?

If the portfolio is entirely invested in a US index ETF such as SPY or VOO, is it likely to grow over the long run?

Q: Hi Folks,
Further to the question I asked about Bank Bail-Ins, could you explain this a bit further: "The best defense is to have a cash account only, where securities are segregated"?
Does this mean an "investment account" where we only have cash or perhaps GICs, T-Bills, etc? In other words, no equities? I'm not sure what you meant by that.

thanks again,

Paul

Q: Is there anything new on the Bank "Bail-In" front? Has it been determined if savings account will be hit or not? What about investment accounts like Investorline? Any new tips on how to protect against this?
Thanks, Paul

Q: I recently let my financial planner go as I am a buy and hold investor and have decided to go the direct investing route. I may have done this prematurely as I am having difficulty in knowing when is the best time for profit taking and how does it affect your holding in a particular stock.For example I have held Microsoft for years Book value $7500 the market value now is $24000. a gain of approx.$16000.If I redeem some of the earning does this not reduce the shares I hold. The purchase price was
$38.13 it is now $95.38 U.S. I consider the gain in value as dead money as it is not invested but just sitting in the security. Any advice would be appreciated.

Q: I have a question about portfolio composition. Am 3 years away from converting RSP to RRIF. Live comfortably from dividends, CPP etc.. RSP and cash accounts are equal size , concentrated,and hold banks, REITS, pipelines, utilities ( whose decline does not worry me as long as dividends remain, actually good buying opportunity). My TFSA is 3% of total portfolio and is my ' fun money" trading around many of your growth portfolio stocks.
I have cash available in both RSP and cash accounts and wish to buy smaller cap high dividend paying stocks for more return (and risk) potential. Targeting 10% allocation total cash/RSP value. So, where should I hold these stocks.....RSP or cash or both? RSP will give me 3 years tax deferral on gains ( which will be then taxed at high rate on withdrawal) or cash account with more immediate (but lower) taxes.
Any other advice would be appreciated.
DEREK

Q: In my never ending quest to understand all things market related, could your team briefly explain "MARKET EFFECTIVENESS" ratings, and what constitutes a good % rate for a company management group. There are 3 groupings 1) equity usually the 7 to 15 % range. 2) asset usually the lowest % of the group and 3) capital. Never do the % seem all that high. Is one more useful then the others, and are these a good tools for evaluation? Thank you as always very happy with your service

Q: Re. Tamara's question about sources for info. I find stockchase.com helpful. It complies comments and opinions from BNN Market Call in a searchable format. You can get multiple viewpoints on a company or see all comments by a single guest

Q: Hi All everyone at 5i!
If you were to pick a source of good business and stock information available to the retail investor, what would it be ( besides 5i of course)! Cheers, Tamara

Q: Hi Peter
Recently several high profile investment advisors have predicted an "eminent crash" in the markets. Any suggestions on how to protect oneself in these uncertain times. Do you believe a crash is eminent.
Thanks.
Cam

Q: Hi Peter,
I’m wondering if it’s possible to access your past comments made when you add or remove stocks from the 5i portfolios. Specifically, right now I’d like to be reminded of what you said regarding Hydro One, but it would be nice to be able to retrieve your comments on companies you pick but have not done reports on.
If such a tool isn’t available now, perhaps you might consider it at some point? Thanks a lot.
Molly

Q: I think I posted a ? about Cougar Asset Mgt attributed to the G&M.

The article was in the Financial Post & by Barry Critchley; Do you Know anything about this firm? e.g Performance & fee structure.

Ernie

Q: Hi There,
Have you heard of RDI Research Driven Research company who claim to
offer some free research? How are they compensated since it is free?
In your opinion is it worth consideration or am I likely always going to get
an optimistic viewpoint so I buy the stock?
http://rdinvesting.com/
thanks

Q: My question is about building my etf portfolio. As I'm young and long term oriented, I would like to allocate a higher % to emerging market. Probably around 20%. I have analyzed many EM ETF and I have noticed how different in country allocation, value, sector allocation they are. Would they idea of buying, lets say 4 or 5 EM ETF that would represent that diversity, instead of one, make sense for you?
What would be the down sides? Cost doesn't appear to be one, has I can buy ETF for free, I don't mind the 'complexity' of rebalancing if my EM attribution goes up or down. I understand that EM might goes up or down has a group, but I found difficult to imagine that, in the longer term, an etf with 30% of Chinese shares and high PE and lots of tech, and one with more Indian, Russian and Brazilian shares, with low PE and energy would perform the same. Because I have no idea witch one will out or underperform, I would guess that this diversification would lower volatility and slightly decrease risk among my EM allocation. Feel free to comment this strategy or to challenge me about it.

Q: In your response this morning to Mike regarding BCI you stated: " Liquidity is an issue however so we would keep that in mind regarding a position size if adding to the name." I would appreciate it if you would explain why liquidity is an issue if I intend to take a position. Thank you.

Q: I see members are looking for charts, with a watch list. These may be useful..
Barchart,com, or tmxmoney.com ....
You have Excellent service.!!!

Q: Instead of Globe Investor watchlists, that have lost much of their utility, I now use the barchart.com watchlists, free for up to 20 watchlists. Plenty of useful features, mainly technical ones. If you call up a ticker on your watchlist the chart allows you to access a comparison chart with up to three other tickers (a feature that disappeared with the revamped Google Finance). The bottom of the main page lists recent news items. (I recommended Barchart to Globe Investor, and now the Globe's watchlists are based on barchart data...)

Q: Hi,
Could you explain the difference between a compounded and an annualized return ?

Thank you

Q: Hi, about the recent question from Brad, who, like many of us is left clueless when recent changes to Globe Investor Watchlist app resulted in loss of a very useful feature which updated news as and when released from various news wire sources for the stocks on the watchlist. I am now using Yahoo Finance ( I think it's free), where I have uploaded my Watch List and most news releases are updated as and when out. The only issue is that, Yahoo Finance also posts Motley Fool/Accesswire articles, frequently, linked to these stocks, but are of no use for me. I am reasonably OK with this.

Q: This is for Brad,
I set up a lot of "alerts" at my online broker to get information relatively quickly.
You can also set up an account (free) at CISION (newswire.ca) under "MY SERVICE" to receive company releases by e-mail.
Hope it helps.
John

Q: Hi Peter
Please help me understand.
In your column in the Post today you claim “our model could care less about the TSX” and as independent investors we are “ free to see to our portfolio far more diversified than the Canadian market”.
So why does the Income Portfolio only have 7 % outside Canada?
Thx Frank