Investment Q&A

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?

Q: Peter,
This is the latest (Dec19) expected consensus earnings (in %) for 2015 S&P (all revised down from the last one by the way except financials)
Financials +17.6
Cons. discretionary +16.8
Materials +14.8
Tech +11.3
Health +10.8
Industrials +9.7
Cons staples +6.8
Energy -20.4

My question: I have not been able to find the same info for Canada ( a recurring problem for me) but could this US info be used as a proxy for Canada. (my take? not for all)
Thanks for that

Q: (sorry, i was unable to enter thus question without entering a symbol)
Would you please comment on 3 things... 1 What industries in Canada other than airlines will most benefit over the next while by the drop in oil..2 same question for US market and 3 what foreign country etf ( eg,EWG? ) would most benefit by the drop in oil?

Q: Hi Peter and team, Early in the morning I sent you 2 questions: one about PKI which was answered in no time (thank you) and another one w/a link to this article, but had no reply:

http://www.thetradingreport.com/2014/12/10/guess-what-happened-the-last-time-commodity-prices-crashed-like-this/

I don’t want to sound pushy......just wondering if you got it? In case you didn’t get it, I was asking for your opinion of the article. It actually feels like 2008 (as a member said today in a question he asked). Should we be worried/prepared? How do you think precious metals will perform if such a scenario will occur?

I’ve chosen the option for other 5i members to view it, but I leave to you if you want to post it or just answer to my email.

Thank you again!

Q: GS has issued a "SELL CANADA" statement(recommendation?) that has been mentioned on BNN numerous times in the last several days. What does this mean? Is GS powerfull enough to add to the selling pressure on the TSX? Thank You Ron

Q: Hi guys, my percentage weighting of my stocks fluctuates every day based on the previous days close of the stocks price. So if the stock is down one day it will have a 5% weighting and if is up the next day it might have a 6% or even a 7%weighting. Is that common, or is there a better way to figure out the accurate weighting of each stock. Thanks, Nick

Q: Hi Peter,
Is there a rule(s) that you use to determine when to sell a losing position? I seem to always let certain positions drop 50%+, end up getting frustrated and selling. Some of my current losers include ARE, LOY.V, AVO, SGY. All are approaching 50% loses. On the flip side, what rule(s) do you use to determine when to sell a winning position? Thanks for all you do.

Q: Peter and Team,

Of my invested assets, I currently have 2.5% cash, 5% bonds (CBO ishares ETF), and 92.5% in stocks. The stock portfolio is diversified as I have tried to model after 5i methodology. I do have other cash outside of my current invested assets that amounts to the equivalent of approximately 25% of my invested assets.

I have been trying to increase my allocation to bonds a little bit because I like yield and feel like my allocation to bonds should be higher than it is for risk-management purposes.

My question is two fold:
1. I am 32 and wondering what allocation I should have to bonds?
2. Is there a bond or other yield vehicle that is similar to CBO that is exposed to international companies or companies that get earnings from international sources like Brazil, India, China, etc. I like CBO because it is short (less than 5 years) duration corporates.

My expectation is to trim some huge winners in the stock portfolio soon that will give me approximately 5% more of the portfolio to put into my fixed income allocation.

PS. I'd also consider floating rate stuff or things that reset with LIBOR or things of that nature as well.

Thanks!

Marc

Q: Hello Peter, Ryan et al, I am with Paul K all the way. At over 70, retired, I have no where else to go for income with reasonable safety but banks, utilities, pipelines, REITs etc (throw in BEP.UN and BIP.UN). Fixed income? Bah! (I still have a few GIC's going to maturity). For sure, I have stuck my neck out and have a few stocks like ACQ, HLF, EH AFN etc. As for our golden years,we've been led to a place that is not what we expected to be (not your fault). I have a different take. As an INCOME INVESTER (there are very few of us left), I worry about, look at, first and foremost 'INCOME'. That means that if income keeps up with inflation (pray that it be low), I don't worry so much about what happens to the capital. There have been periods in the past when the value of stocks had gone down but the income kept up with inflation. So, the question is: would a portfolio of cashflow generaters that pay out most of it and growing the cashflow going forward be OK for someone like me? Yours with fingers crossed, Henry

Q: I am trying to establish an asset allocation program. I am 74 yrs old have some money in RRIF act's professionally managed and some money I manage myself. My desired return for my self managed portfolio is 5-7% with medium risk tolerance. Please suggest an appropriate allocation.

Q: Since certain sectors (such as Energy) have fallen so much, do you recommend people rotate to keep portfolio weightings in check from before? For example, I had about a 10% weighting in energy before the sector meltdown, so it's closer to 5% now. Should I reduce some weightings in others (eg. consumer staples, tech, etc) to bump up Energy? I would plan to reshuffle after a recovery...

Thanks!

Q: Sector rotation keeps coming up in various posts. I sense you agree.

Clearly there is a rotation out of energy. Any other sectors?

And where is the smart money going? And what would be the top couple of names in each of those "rotated into" sectors?

Thank you.