Investment Q&A

Q: I've never seen this kind of question asked: If I want to earn 7% on my money by investing in about 15 great, solid companies and selling shares in order to achieve the 7% return, what might such a portfolio look like? Would the 5i Model Portfolio, as it is, fit the bill? How might it be tweaked? I know there are a lot of questions and considerations around the question, but just looking for a general reply and any thoughts on this approach. Thank you.

Q: Given that the markets (except for Canada) are near all time highs and appear to be quite stretched, do you feel that it is wise to enter any long positions, even 5i's picks? My instinct tells me that I should be hedging my portfolio and search for short opportunities rather than go long? Any thoughts on this? Thanks so much.

Q: Hi Peter. There is a crushing amount of debt in the world which I feel may be beyond the ability of governments, companies and individuals to ever repay, as credit room appears nearly exhausted. If this is correct, the risk of creditor defaults is significant and may lead to bad deflation. Could you give me your opinion on the risk and significance of deflation and how can you protect your assets in that situation, other than holding cash?
Thanks again for your invaluable advice.

Q: This question concerns my RRSP. I am in my mid seventies and my RRSP is laddered for the next 6 yr. Each year when one of the laddered bonds comes due it results in a lot more cash than I am required by law to take out. This has resulted in an ever increasingl cash balance. My accountant informs me if I take this cash out it will bump me into an even higher tax bracket. What would you advise? And if I leave the cash within the RRSP, can you suggest an investment for it.? I have no pressing immediate need for this money. Thank you.

Q: While working on a new spreadsheet to treat all accounts as a whole for portfolio mix/diversification purposes, I am wondering about having 5% of REITS for total portfolio in RRSP account rather than having 5% in each account. The idea is a top down approach first for all accounts - like have a portfolio mix and select "best" stocks, and buy them within the account that has the best income tax treatment. From a tax point of view, REITS are assigned to RRSP account and growth stocks for the longer term that pay no or little dividend at the present time are assigned to TFSA. The other idea would be to select stocks for a US dollar account where the TSX is thin, like Health Care, and/or where the business climate is more favourable for a particular sector. The outcome would be individual accounts being out of balance relative to the diversified portfolio mix but with all the accounts taken together, a diversified portfolio mix would be in place, achieved. Seems as if this approach is like a bolt lighting cracking overhead for me, being a newcomer to all of this....and I would appreciate your take.....Thanks....Tom

Q: Hello 5i,
The yield curve is flattening; the spread between 2 and 10 year is dangerously narrowing. This kind of situation, if it continues flattening, could be a precursor of market downturn as it happened in 2000 and 2008.
I was all in cash in 2008 and am wondering how to respond now; mind you there is always a lag time between the flattening of the yield curve and the market decline.
Your opinion please.
Tony

Q: Barclay's is predicting the USA will experience a negative CPI in 2015. What would be the best sectors to be invested in should we find ourselves in a deflationary climate? Thank you.

Q: Hello, I plan to complete my portfolio with the following efts. Right now I am 100% canadian equity spread somewhat evenly over the 10 sectors using your income/model portfolios as a guide. I plan to add 2% of each bond ..xhy, cvd, cod, cob, ebb, flot, for 12% bond exposure, and 18% us equity etfs split evenly between vig, spy, iwo. This would leave 70% canadian equity with a mix of growth/dividend stocks 30/70 ratio. We have a 20 year time frame before retirement, very stable income. My portfolio is broken down to 22%rrsp, 28%tfsa, 50% non registered. I am thinking I should place my us etfs in the rrsp to avoid us taxes. Are XHY and FLOT considered US income as well?(main question) If so, I am assuming I should place these within a rrsp account as well and the rest of the bond etfs in my TFSAs. Would like your thoughts on this strategy. Also, do I have enough international/US exposure, or should I increase my US ETFs 5-10% or add an emerging market etf like VWO. Thanks again for your assistance, may have to dock me a few credits for this one:)

Q: I have a very small weighting in Materials in my portfolio (1.3% thru ADN). I was thinking of selling ADN (I'm up about 7% including the dividend in 2 years) and building a position in either FM, WEF or both. My current portfolio weightings (TFSA, RRSP, LIRA) are 18.6% Financials, 8% Healthcare, 1.6% Industrial, 24.6% Technology, 14.4% Consumer Staples and Discretionary, 5% Energy and 26.7% Cash; all mixed between blue chips and smaller growth companies. I have a 20+ year time horizon. Do you have any other suggestions to deploy about 20% of the cash and some potential stocks to buy. I'm looking for more growth and I am not adverse to risk.

Q: Hi 5i team!

I am scratching and pounding my head on which stocks to buy next. Here is my dilemma, I know I should buy stocks to diversify my portfolio. However, when there is blood on the streets(oil sector) it is time to buy. Need you to give me a clearer path on which stocks to buy to complement my portfolio. Here is what I have so far:

ETF; VSB 15%, VTI 15%, VEU 12% and VCE 10% which will be sold once I am a handful of stocks away from completing the model growth portfolio.

Stocks; Raging from 2% to 5%.
SJ, NUS, CXI, AYA, BNS, STN, ESL, HCG, GUD, SGY and 12% cash.

Thank you

Q: I am quite happy with your service but I notice that you don't use stop losses, either mental or actual, which may have helped in the case of AHF and AVO. I do not own either, having sold my AHF some time ago. Any comment?

Q: I currently own GG:NYSE and have a paper gain. If the ECB does provide stimulus this Thursday would you sell GG:NYSE and buy a European ADR listed on the NYSE. If they do not provide stimulus would you sell GG:NYSE and buy a Swiss ADR traded on the NYSE, thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my question.

Q: This question is about establishing a diversified portfolio of 4 ETF's with the goal of long term gains without having to carefully monitor ones portfolio.
At initiation, an equal amount of money would be invested in each ETF, (Horizon Active Floating Rate Bond - for fixed income), (i-shares TSX Dividend Aristocrats for Canadian exposure) (BMO S&P 500 for American exposure), and (BMO MCSI EAFE INDEX) for global exposure. At the end of the year the portfolio would be re-balanced.

For a person who can't carefully monitor his portfolio:
1. Do you consider this to be a viable investment strategy?
2. Do you agree with the ETF choices and if not would you please suggest alternatives in the 4 categories?

As always, thanks so much for your valued suggestions.

Q: Today the Swiss Franc was decoupled from the EURO and it is widely expected that effectively QE will be brought into the Euro zone to stimulate growth. I would have expected that to be a positive for the markets yet they didn't respond that way. The USD continues to trend higher while almost every other currency is going lower, US Treasury yields going lower, worries of deflation in Europe, most commodities continue to tank, gold is trending higher and the VIX is moving past 20. What do you make of all this? The hair on the back of my neck is starting to stand up.

As always, thanks for your wonderful service.

Q: Hi Peter and Team,

I am often suprised by target growth rates (10%) some investors write in about and am wondering if i should be setting higher goals for my portfolio. I often struggle on how to evaluate my own performance as a manager of my own investments. I am hoping you can provide some guidance on my own positioning and whether my targets seem reasonable given my circumstances and my risk tolerance. I am approx. 5 years or so from full retirement. My first priority is to protect the assets i have and i do my financial planning based on a 5% overall return but set a goal for myself as a 7% average over multiple years. Since i don't pay any fees for someone else to manage I thought this seemed reasonable. i am almost fully invested in equities since i have a defined benefit pension plan that is fully funded with little or no risk.

Do you have some sort of metric that self managed investors should be looking at to evaluate their own performance. I would consider myself on the lower end of medium risk but not yet on the low risk side and income is not currently an issue. Any guidance or evaluation metrics you can provide for us or point us 'do-it-yourself' investors to would be helpful.

Thanks a million.

Cheers

Q: Hi Peter,

The previous question was more about market sentiment than anything company specific. I hold a very diversified list of 40 stocks but the list I provided were the worst offenders.

Maybe I should find a new hobby like stamp collecting or better yet get a gym membership until the market uncertainty passes which I suspect will take a few more months.

Thanks

Q: I want to feel comfortable with my holdings when interest rates eventually begin to rise. Could you simply categorize the following industries into one of three categories. 1) Greatly affected negatively. 2) Affected moderately negatively 3) Not much effect 4) Will affect positively.

Financial - Banks, Insurance, Investment co's

Utilities - Gas/electrical , Pipelines, telcos

Manufacturing ( includes technology )

Consumer - Durables & discretion

Resources - Gold + Materials + Oil & gas.

Pref shares

Any general comments also welcome.

Many thanks

Paul C

Q: The last few years have seen the introduction of style-based ETF's that focus on low-volatility (ZLB, ULV, XMI), momentum (WXM, YXM, MTUM), growth (XCG), or value (FXM, VLUE) styles of investing. The low-volatility and momentum ETF's in particular seem to have been doing well recently.
However for the last five years or so we have seen generally rising markets that have provided a climate for positive results, and one cannot check how these ETF's did in major down drafts because they were initiated more recently than 2008/2009.
How do you think the various style-based ETF's would do under different market conditions than we have seen in the last five years?
I have checked the performance of some of these funds against the TSX Composite Index during the correction of September-October 2014 and from the high point to the low the TSX Index was down 12.4%, FXM was down 12.5%, WXM was down 11.0%, XCG was down 8.4%, and ZLB was down 5.3%. How much significance should be attached to results from a single correction?
I guess my basic question is whether you see any advantage to diversifying my ETF's across different styles of investing, or should I just stick with ZLB (up 66% in three years) for my Canadian content ETF? (I recognise the value of multi-country diversification).
By the way, you have a great site - I admire your dedication to investor education. All this for the price of a cup of coffee a week is incredible.

Q: 5i Team,

Happy Holidays. I ask this question every other quarter, whenever I am repositioning my portfolio and deploying new cash. Given what has gone on in the energy space, what would be your ideal target sector weightings for a portfolio going into 2015 using these 5i recommended sector classifications, assuming a blank slate:

Capital Goods / Industrials
Consumer Cyclical
Consumer Staples
Retail
Energy
Financials
Health Care
Information Technology
Internet / Software
Materials (Gold, Silver etc.)
Materials (Paper, Chemical, Steels, etc._
Real Estate
Telecommunication Services
Transportation
Utilities
TOTAL = 100%

Risk tolerance is 7.5 out of 10. Assume a market cap portfolio mix of approx. 15%-20% small cap, 35-40% mid cap, 45% large cap.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

Q: Hello Peter,

What is your view on current market valuations versus risk? In general prices look pretty fully valued right now especially in the US. I'm holding some cash right now but hesitant to buy more at this point as risk/reward profile looks a little shaky.

Are you continuing to buy at these market levels?