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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 often see posts about members saying they are down on ALA-tsx or some other dividend paying company and wonder if they should sell (nearsightedness).

I offer my approach for consideration.

I own ALA and every months when I receive a dividend payment my ACB is lowered. It is like getting some of my original $$ back.

The present dividend yield is 6.7% annually, paid monthly at $0.175/month.

So every month my cost basis is lowering. This is great in a non-taxable account such as a TFSA or RSP (also good in a taxable account).

Eventually I will have 100% of my original, out-of-pocket $$$ returned to me.

At that point in time, lets say we got to a $0.00 ACB for example purposes, then no matter the price of the stock and any dividend I receive the return is incalculable. This is because a dividend of say, $1.00 is an infinite return on a ACB of $0.00.

What % return is Warren Buffet getting on his long held KO, Coke shares? I suspect he is near the infinite, incalculable figure = pure 100% profit. Or is it 100,000,000%... percent profit?
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Example (with made up #'s):

ALA bought at $30.00/share.
Get 6 dividends totalling $1.05 ($01.175*6 = $1.05).
New ACB: $30.00 - $1.05 = $28.95.

** So if ALA is at $29.00 now the investor is still up $ 0.05/share ($29.00 - $28.95).
But in a taxable account the investor on paper is down $1.00 ($30.00 - $29.00) so they could sell @ $29.00 and declare a capital loss even though they have a gain in reality.

This is 1 way the long term investor get richer and richer without getting out of bed.

Hope this is clear and helpful to some one.

It is like with real estate income property in that once you have your original down payment returned all future incomes are 100% profit (minus normal expenses like hydro, insurance..).

Have a great and prosperous day/year.

PS. The other 2 great things I have learned over the years:
1. To not listen to the media, financial tv shows....
2. Once a person knows how basic Options & Shorting works they can make $$$ in any market (up/down/sideways) easily.

Read Answer Asked by Stan (1) on March 29, 2017
Q: Hello,
This is a question more about portfolio management than a specific stock. I need to make a fairly large purchase soon and I have been debating about taking the money out of my TFSA, which thanks to 5I has done amazingly well, ( i would immediately buy the stocks sold in the TFSA in my RIF, thus not losing out on future gains). Better start another sentence :).

Or, use the opportunity to prune my portfolio. I do have too many stocks and would be glad of an opportunity for pruning. But, the ones I would prune have a capital gain of at least seventy per cent. Because I have a number of smaller positions in many cases this comes to only ten or fifteen thousand dollars per stock.

Or, should I just let them ride and live with the chaos?

thanks for any help
Read Answer Asked by joseph on March 29, 2017
Q: I have taken small positions in TV and MX as I like the demand/supply metrics for their products as well as latest company news, being the arrangement with Glencore for TV and the activist shareholder for MX.
I am holding them for a trade over the next 12 months.
What tools would you use ( commodity price, technical analysis, price momentum, target price etc.) to determine when to sell?
Thanks
Derek
Read Answer Asked by Derek on March 29, 2017
Q: Hello Peter et al:

What would you expect the share price to do if the 50%+1 vote is not achieved on April 20th? If Delek are serious about the deal would they increase the offer? There has been no word from the institutions on whether they are going to accept or reject the offer. Would it be wise to sell now and take the $1.92 and buy back in if the deal falls through if the price goes down on rejection of the deal? Any advice on possible scenarios here would be appreciated. My money in Ithaca at the moment is dead money and the difference between the $1.95 and current $1.92 is only 1.5% or so. Is it worth the risk because even if you tender your shares for Apr 20th and it does not go through you will not get your $1.95.

Regards,

Brendan
Read Answer Asked by Brendan on March 29, 2017
Q: You stated recently: (the investment strategy of DFN) "and the strategy could be quite easily duplicated." Holding the banks in a self-constructed portfolio would indeed be easy, but it would produce a 4% yield, similar to ZEB. How would you construct the portfolio, as you suggested.

Thank you for your services, esp of stocks not usually covered by analysts.
Read Answer Asked by Kurt W on March 28, 2017
Q: I watched Cohodes on BNN this morning, and he didn't offer anything remotely substantial to back up his claims. It seems to me there are two real issues with the company 1) did they fully disclose in a timely manner the amount of fraudulent mortgages some of their brokers wrote and 2) are their loan loss provisions high enough considering those mortgages and their overall riskier loan portfolio. I obviously don't know the answer to the first, and for the second, I think the answer is no, they aren't high enough. Thoughts?
Read Answer Asked by Alex on March 28, 2017
Q: thanks again for the service you provide. my question is this I held engh for a long time and sold it and replaced it with abt - gps - also msft and csco in the u.s. because they tended to perform better than engh until it's latest rise. other than this stock I own all of the balanced portfolio in the proper percentages. do you think that I should still own engh considering the above. thank you
Read Answer Asked by gene on March 28, 2017
Q: Preference shares
Following your reply, I conclude that, even on a reset date, preference shares may not trade at face value. Therefore, there would be no point in time when an investor is assured of full repayment of capital. Why then would these shares ever be suitable for investor adverse to interest rate risk? The only exception would be the investor willing to hold the shares for an unknown period until the shares are worth more than face value or the issuer decides to redeem them. Also, I wonder whether investors generally understand that, if they pay more than face value for the shares, the dividends represent in part a repyment in capital. Preference shares appear to have an undeserved allure, suitable only for investors willing to gamble with interest rates (perhaps having a trading strategy) or remain invested for an unknow period of time. Perhaps they should generally thought of as speculative and/or suitable only for sophisticated investors. I question whether even investment advisors understand this instrument well, particularly the range of attributes among issues.
Read Answer Asked by Carl on March 28, 2017