Investment Q&A

Q: Hello,

Is it OK to buy odd lot shares, to maintain a certain percentage in portfolio. Are they harder to sell? I have so far tended to buy in multiplies of 100 shares. But sometimes this tends to overweight a certain share in the portfolio because the share price is higher to start with. e.g. The etf "IWO" costs $145 per share therefore this occupies more than 25% of my kids RESP portfolio. Thanks fro your advice. I am learning a lot just looking at the question and answer section each day. cheers, Shyam

Q: This is to follow-up on the question posed by Linda on Jan 9/14 re. tax issues/negative factors to be considered with holding US (or other foreign)dividend paying stocks in a TFSA. Your response was that, yes, in a TFSA witholding tax will be applied on foreign dividends: in an RRSP it will not.
I'm not sure how much weight to give this info when structuring your TFSA. Should it just be -No- TFSA is not the optimal place to hold foreign equity - get your foreign exposure elsewhere. Or - Yes - this is something you should be aware of - it will act as a bit of a drag on returns - but should be subordinate to the over-all objective of your TFSA.
Specifically, I would like to re-structue my TFSA to replicate a mini stand-alone portfolio. And to do so I was considering the Mawer Balanced Fund as a simple one step solution - 40% FI; 20% Can. equity: 40% foreign equity - MER below 1% and consistently outperforms its benchmark.
Question: should the negative tax implications on the 40% foreign component be cause enough not to follow this approach?
Thank-you

Q: Greetings, Team:

I wonder why resource stocks (e.g. Baytex and Crescent Point) tend to go down and are criticized, whereas tech and pharma stocks (e.g. Constellation and Valient) tend to go up when they acquire?

Q: Are any members familiar with the Linde Equity Report which focuses on American stocks? In 2013 it was ranked top financial newsletter - in contrast Jim Cramer's (Mad Money)was 77th. I'd appreciate any feedback members may provide.
Thank you in advance,
Helen

Q: In your response to Graham re Badger you suggested one stock should not exceed 10% of the portfolio. Is that 10% of the equity portion or 10% of the total portfolio including income securities { bonds } and cash? Thank you.

Q: Hi, I originally had 1500 shares of Badger. Sold 500 and paid for my investment. With the 1000, I now have 3000 with the split. It has 'fortunately' given me a heavy weighting with this company. You seem to keep recommending it and I continue to like it even though it does tend to swing my investments when it has good and bad days. My dilemma....at what point does a 'balanced' portfolio outway selling a good stock!

Cheers,
Graham

Q: Hi. I'm a new comer to your service. I love it so far. I have a question regarding your summary list. I am wondering if this is a list of stocks that are okay to buy or, is it the list of the stock universe that you cover and not all of them necessarily represent the best ideas to buy at this time?

Q: I understand that you are not tax professionals and if you can't answer my questions that's ok. I also know it is hard to answer accurately without knowing all my information and details. First question is is interest paid in a margin account tax deductible?

Second question is more complicated. My wife works for Abbott and gets stock options. She pays 2% of her pay and company matches 3% of her pay for a total of 5 percent. Her portion comes off her check and the companies portion shows up on T4 as earnings. When do we pay tax on this? Only when we sale? I understand that we have to claim the dividends as earnings through out the year. To add further confusion Abbott split and now she owns approximately 300 shares of Abbvie and Abbott. How does a split effect taxes?

As I stated this may be complicated and I will take any general answers or advice.

Q: Do you generay favor and recommend dripping a stock or etf?
With 4-5% yield on some stocks or ETFs, dripping can make an impact over a few years

Q: Peter, I wanted to say I agree so much with Pauls question of Feb. 5. I think you are helping a lot of GIC refuges, such as myself.When Gics dropped years ago we slowly stepped into the market with Pembina, IPL, K bro, Cinaplex Rio Can, Keyera. All were paying between 8 and 10 percent dividends at that time. It seemed no one wanted them. Well of course hind sight is 20 20 but as they say the rest is history.. I believe so many of us are looking for the next one of these stocks. They seem very few and far between today. I, like Paul, will not invest in anything that does not pay 5%.Banks, although o.k. have been one of our poorest performers over the years. That is why I think high dividend payers are soooo important. Yes a person takes a hit on the odd one ie. ATP and YELLOW but what we are looking for, I believe is the next K bro or IPL or ect. ect. That is for you to decide. I know it is not as easy now but some gems must still be there. That is what is so valuable to me. Thanks Ken

Q: Re Jason's query regarding trading fees:
TD Waterhouse now charges $9.99 for all Cdn.& U.S. trades placed
online through WebBroker. No minimum balance requirements and
no share quantity limitations.

Q: Do long-short funds produce better returns than long-only funds. Thanks. Michael

Q: What is your opinion on tight stops and how tight?

Q: hello,

I am wondering why some of issues on your portfolio are NR (not rated)? What has prevented them from being rated?

Thanks

Q: Your client, a couple of days ago, was selling a stock he had held for many years and would experience a large appreciation. Something to check for income tax purposes is the "Statue of Limitations", which is for 7 years. His income tax may only be calculated on the appreciation for the last 7 years.

It's worth a looking into.

Q: In response to Jason's query re:broker commissions,RBC Direct's commission is $9.95 regardless of total value of the account.

Q: hi 5i,
not sure if this is your area of expertise or if you want to comment. if not , no problem.
what is your thought on the risk with the trillions of dollars in the derivatives market, and off market stuff. i read recently that one of the recent financial industry persons in europe who "fell from a high work office tower to his death" was trying to unwind a multi trillion dollar derivatives trading account for a major european financial institution. there have been quite a few of these strange deaths lately???
thx chris

Q: Hey guys just in my first year of investing learning on the fly I have invested in tcn bnk win e aya ppy dhx and Msl am doing ok but I have it in a Tfsa is this a smart place to invest in ? Also I use itrade but they charge 24.99 every time I buy or sell any better options than this.

Thanks so much

Q: Hello, we are long term investors wanting safety and dividends. We currently hold XIU and BCE shares. We are considering selling XIU and buying more BCE. What is your opinion of this move?

Thank you

Q: Hi team: I really appreciate the posts related to sector weightings and have been trying to take a more macro look at my holdings and see where I am over/under weight.

Based on an older post or two from you, I've created the following categories with weights, and I'm trying to determine where my holdings fall.

Materials - Gold/Silver
Materials - Other
Energy
Utilities
Cons. Discret.
Cons. Staples
Telecom
Info. Tech.
Int/Software
Industrial
Industrials - Transportation
Health Care - US
Health Care - Canada
Financials
Retail
Real Estate

We don't need to get into my specific weightings as everyone's targets will be different based on their situation. However,
I'm a little unsure where to categorise certain stocks, which isn't helping my analysis.

Can you confirm the list in general makes sense, and I'm not overlapping? If so, can you please help with the following?

AVO- you had referred to it before as an Industrial, wouldn't it fit in the Information Technology space?
MDA, GIB.A - do you consider these Info Tech, Software, or Industrial?
BAM.A - Financial or Industrial?
WIN - Financial or Info Tech, or Telecom?

Thanks!

(You have catergory groups on the right hand side for financials, metals, oil, real estate, technology already. One helpful thing, at least for me, would be to have categories for each of the areas above, so people could reference stocks in those areas when looking at their weightings. It may help reduce amount of questions like this and be a great resource for subscribers).