Investment Q&A

Q: Good morning,

I read somewhere about trading eroding away at fees. I am a very long term investor and I tend to hold positions for a long time. I am currently with BMO Investorline and get charged $9.95 per trade. My question is adding to dividend stocks to increase my payouts in the portfolio.For example obviously you are not going to add to say BNS with a buy of only $100.00, the trade fees would be too much.

What would be the appropriate number be to add to positions? $500, $1000, $1500 or other keeping fees in mind to not take away all your profits? I always find this difficult to see if it is worth while or not.

Also I keep wishing BMO would lower their fees but hasn't happened yet.

Thanks

Q: Would you recommend selling options during a period when a company will be reporting earnings? Or is that not part of the decision?

Q: In non-registered account we had huge gains in solid dividend payers (ENB, SLF,CNR,FTS) and last year against tax-loss selling was able to reduce weight in portfolio to approximately 4% each. Donated some shares to charities and also gifted some to son (still had to pay capital gains but didn't hurt as much because benefit is still in the family). New money has been going to growth securities and thanks to your advise in time we may have huge capital gains again. Are there other strategies for dealing with this happy problem?

Q: When evaluating a business, how much time would you suggest someone spend on their due diligence? For example, after learning that MRS was added to the 5i portfolio, how much time (ballpark) should someone put into it before initiating a 1-2% position . The reason I ask is because as soon as I hear about a good opportunity, I instantly feel like I am under the gun to make a decision to either buy or move on. I understand this is quite subjective, but I'm curious whether it is 2 hrs, 10 hrs, or 50 hours....
Thanks

Q: In Canada, in addition to the banks' investment departments, there are many brokerage houses, investment firms, etc. that issue stock reports, and price targets for Canadian stocks, companies like Raymond James, Cormark, Haywood, ATB Capital, Eight Capital, Acumen, Canaccord, etc.. Do you consider any of these companies' stock recommendations and price targets to have any value or are they all simply promotional, and supporting companies that they do financings with, or hope to do financings with, or have recommended to their clients? Please indicate which, if any, of these companies you feel are worth paying any attention to.

Q: Hi group wondering what your general thoughts are on inflation and what stocks would benefit the most if we get high inflation going fwd . What are your thoughts and recommendations going fwd

Q: Around march or April last year you published a special opportunity report listing 10 companies such as Byd,Csu,Cae,etc.
Would you make any changes today?
Do you plan to do an update?

Q: Am I correct in concluding from my calculations that investors place a lower value on GS shares than they do on firms like MS and JPM? If yes, is GS’ share price discounted because GS carries a higher risk than its peers ? For GS my calculations have ROE at 16%, and PEG at 1.25. I cannot work out ROCI— I come up with a bizarre number. What are your ratios for all these please?

Other than a high debt level, would you have concerns about GS that amateurs would not see? Is GS a reasonably good investment based on both its own projections, its actual history, and projections by the more insightful “Mike Mayo type” analysts? (I don't have access to Mayo’s research) .

I am fully allocated to financials, but that seems to be one of the few sectors that possibly has some value. Correct? I find worrying about “diversification” and “allocations” rather tiresome. Do you find time spent on “proper” allocation worth while on your own PERSONAL accounts ? Really?

Q: Hey Team,

Thoughts on industries or specific companies to target after the federal budget announcement?
Thanks,
Harrison

Q: Thanks to Moez for a nice article/stock screener today. I was surprised to see so many companies from the Metals sector.

IF he were to apply one more criterion to the 22 companies that made the list, i.e. debt load, which companies would come up on the top?
( the companies with the least debt load to the most)
Thanks.

Q: The CAPE ratio (Cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio) of the S&P 500 presently rests over 36X compared to its historical average which is much, much lower. What future influences can you see to affect its measure going forward other than a market pullback?

Q: I would like to invest a portion of my RRSP funds in the balanced portfolio I've seen here. I have a 15-year time span until I'd possibly need to begin relying on these funds. I understand that we are all in unique circumstances and that you don't wish to provide specific advice but could you give me some overall guidance on how one should be integrating the portfolio into an investment account? More specifically, should I purchase a position in all stocks at the same time or slowly adding one stock at a half/ full position per month or if they seem to be retracting in price. I thought of adding a new holding on a regular basis but I was concerned that I would not have the complete industry exposure until all were purchased. Is there a more prudent way of doing things in your experience. Thanks in advance.

Q: On each of your 3 portfolio pages you have a section for "Annualized Returns" . Could you define and explain how they are calculated - I am stumped as to how to do this calculation for my own results.
Thank you

Q: Can you help me regarding how to determine fees/yields for ETFs?
I'm presently looking at is HMMJ

What is the "total" management fee?
Their website has manage fee of 0.75% plus tax and a MER of 0.85%

I don't know where Google finance comes up with a dividend yield of 7.47%? Horizon's website has the following:
Most Recent Distribution per Unit : 0.03433
Estimated Annualized Yield : 1.16%
12-Month Trailing Yield: 2.83%
Distribution Frequency : Quarterly

Also, for the most recent distribution, would you multiply the stock price at time of distribution by 0.03433
For example using stock price $10.65. 10.65 times 0.03433 or 36.6 cents for most recent quarter times number of stocks held?

thanks for all your help?
Paul

Q: Generally speaking what percentage of one's portfolio do you believe should be allocated to US dollar investments for diversification?

Thanks,

Joe

Q: Constellation reports in approx. 3 weeks - TD WebBroker shows an estimate of $10.13 on 4 analysts, down from 7 last year, whereas 5i (using Bloomberg?) shows $12.82 on 2 analysts, if I read and interpret correctly.

How do the analyst numbers normally work - as the date approaches more of them weigh in and the different services come closer to dovetailing the actual earnings or...? Please explain the present discrepancy with TD & 5i. Evidently TD casts its net wider in the analyst poll so would you say 5i uses analysts with a better proven track record?

Q: How do big block trades work?

You mentioned yesterday LSPD's SP dropped almost 6% likely due to a 3 million share+ block trade, while Friday's total volume traded was only 1.3 million shares. If so, can we expect another sell down on Monday until that 3 million share+ block is totally "consumed"? It seems the large portfolio managers are manipulating SPs, at the expense of the retails, to get their privately negotiated deals done (by suppressing SP to the deal's level). Where is the regulatory agency's protection for all investors in this regard. My "paper loss" was about 17% on LSPD from yesterday. Please help me in understanding this process better. Just frustrated. Thanks.

Q: Hello 5i gang.
I have a general question that I'm hoping you can shed some light on.
I find it difficult to get my head around some of the market cap. vs revenue etc of some of these high flyers discussed here on a regular basis.
Can you give me a general sense of how a company that is currently at 20m in revenue with a market cap of 1.3b would grow into this valuation? Are we talking multiple years of several hundred % growth compounding? Or am I looking at this all through the incorrect lens?
I assume at some point fundamentals will matter and if said growth does not materialize, the stock price will come back to the "correct" valuation?

Thanks for your help.

Q: Hi Peter & Gang,
I have a question regarding the price of lumber vs WFG and leverage.

If the price of lumber goes up 20-50% should the price of WFG stock go up equally or is there any leverage. For instance if you have an industry that is low margin but high volume producers, one would expect to get more torque the stock.

Thanks

Q: Peter: Juanitas question and reply confuses me a bit- when I enter an order with BMO there is no place to designate the exchange to use. Doesn’t this occur by a program selecting the best market to use? Thanks
Rod