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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: I own GSY.DB in my non-registered account. I have given instructions to convert my debenture to shares at the end of the month. I bought the debentures when they first came out at a price of $100.00. What will be my ACB for these new shares? What price do I use when I report a capital gain for tax purposes assuming I have a capital gain?
Read Answer Asked by Robert on July 28, 2020
Q: Just reading about the new limited resource capital notes (LRCNs) that RBC is issuing to institutional investors at 4.5%. Since these pay interest, they are better for the banks than equity because they can deduct interest payments but not dividends. For investors, dividends are preferable from a tax point of view but I am wondering if banks are going to try and reduce traditional preferrred share offerings and issue more of these LRCNs. This is probably why preferreds have gone up recently. How do you see this playing out?
Read Answer Asked by Maria on July 27, 2020
Q: Good morning,
Not a question, but a note to offer another possible reason as to the recent “lift” in preferred share prices, especially in the banks sponsored shares. A new capital note structure proposed by RBC (Limited Recourse Capital Notes – LCRN’s) has been accepted by the OSC as qualifying as Additional Tier 1 capital. In short, the view is that these notes, primarily issued to institutions, will limit future issuances in the traditional retail preferred share market, while also potentially funding the redemption of existing shares, resulting in better market tone.

Best regards,
Brad
Read Answer Asked by Brad on July 17, 2020
Q: My kennel full of rate reset preferreds started barking surprisingly over the last couple of days, both in price and volume. Do you have any insight into this, and is it an opportunity to dump some of these hounds
in the dog days of summer (before tax loss selling gets underway in earnest in a couple of months)?
Read Answer Asked by Howard on July 17, 2020
Q: Hello
BMO.PR.C jumped today 8%. All other preferred shares jumped around 2-3%. CPD around 2.5%.

Do you know why BMO.PR.C jumped so much (8%). The volume of BMO.PR.C also jumped at 83,000 shares compare to the daily average of around 5,000. I own these shares and I would like to know if there is an explanation?
Thanks
Read Answer Asked by Terry on July 16, 2020
Q: good morning - the bulk of my fixed income assets are in the form of preferred shares which i would very much like to move away from, although I will take a pounding in the values. My prefs pay in the 5% range and I'm wondering what your take is on replacing them say with canadian banks which are also paying roughly the same in dividends at their current prices. I am already overweight in banks and utilities but wonder what the true risks are for a long term holder. I have read several times that holding the banks over an extended period usually outperforms the canadian index. I know the difference between common and prefs, from a legal perspective, and understand that commons can suffer from downdrafts. However, all my prefs have performed so poorly and the future seems so bleak for them that i would like to get rid of them. What advice can you offer me, please. As always, thank you.
Read Answer Asked by alex on July 16, 2020
Q: There are a lot of different BAM preferred shares that one could choose from to invest. Some have dived yields as high as 8%? What is the difference in each of the issues? Why would one not just choose the one with the highest dividend yield? Can you please clarify? Is there a drawback of choosing one over the other? If you had to choose one which would you pick?

Regards,

Brendan
Read Answer Asked by Brendan on July 06, 2020
Q: Hello 5i Team
Is there a website where I can download the CUSIP and/or ISIN for Canadian Preferred Shares and/or other securities?
I am trying to analyse the holdings of CPD/RPF/ZPR and each one presents the holdings with different information (CPD has the CUSIP, RPF has neither, ZPR has the ISIN), none of them indicate the underlying TSE stock symbol and the security description is extremely truncated (mostly company name).
Some of the company websites have the CUSIP and/or ISIN, however the majority do not. Short of emailing the investor relations department do you suggest any other means?
How successful are you in receiving answers from investor relations representatives?
Thanks
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on June 30, 2020
Q: As a follow up to my earlier question about Preferred shares as a form of income. I currently hold about 53% of my portfolio in savings account funds only giving me 1.5% dividend which is low, however as you mentioned the price will not drop so it is safe and also very liquid. I was thinking about taking 1/4 of that money (12% of my total portfolio) and putting it is some preferred share because the dividends are much higher. I do not plan to utilize this amount of funds for a while and it would give me a bit of extra return on my money. I currently have about 8% in common shares of banks, 8% in XLB, 12% in gold stocks, 12% in technology stocks, the rest in other various stocks not in those groups. I use the Savings Account mutual funds as cash for when I decide to buy stocks and I have been increasing my holdings slowly since the March lows. Would it be better just to buy the common dividend paying stock or is there an advantage to buying the preferred. I know the preferred share have a higher hierarchy if a company goes bankrupt but they are very much more illiquid.

Thanks again,

Brendan

P.S. when are either you or Ryan going to appear on BNN market call again? Have not seen yee there for a while now.
Read Answer Asked by Brendan on June 23, 2020
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