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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: So having been through the Great Recession and now the cornea virus, I finally get it. Review your portfolio ,sell those companies whose fundamentals are damaged and possibly beyond repair ( swallow the loss),deploy your cash after things have settled down and there is more clarity into stocks who have the potential to rebound much better than the stocks you have sold. Is that about it?
Read Answer Asked by Derek on March 19, 2020
Q: hi,
can I get your best ideas for a long term investor ( who enjoys dividends with some growth ) for the following: (Canadian equities if possible please ) home improvement, Pharma, health services, REITS, drugstores, railways, and any other areas that you think should do well moving forward with covid19 looming over us for the next while...
cheers and stay healthy everyone. make sure to get outside and get lots of exercise! chris
Read Answer Asked by chris on March 19, 2020
Q: Dear 5i
With the recent chaos in the markets i had gone to mostly cash but kept the bond ETF`s ( CLF , CBO , XBB , ZAG ) , only to watch them go down quite a bit as well . It's a bit concerning to think that i was well protected to the down side ( at least i thought i was ) , only to see bonds go down . You would think with interest rates going down ( generally good for bonds ) bond yields going down that bond prices typically go up . But such haven`t been the case . In light of all this should i be temporarily reducing my bond exposure or is the worse over do you think for dropping bond prices ?
Would appreciate your insight .
Thanks
Bill C.
Read Answer Asked by Bill on March 18, 2020
Q: Hi,

A general question about a companies responsibility to update investors with respect to their business. Occasionally, companies update the market with respect to upcoming earnings and will 'guide up' or 'guide down' depending on what is happening. In light of the current chaos, it seems to me that now many companies have not updated guidance (I could be wrong, I follow the market generally...). Could you shed some light on to why not many companies have issued guidance updates? Perhaps the situation is so fluid, companies really can't update b/c they can't update with reliable numbers, or they are afraid to (make a terrible situation catastrophic), or...?

Further, are there time frames on issuing updates (X weeks before next quarter, for example) or perhaps requirements for updating if forecasts are going to be massively missed?

I'm basically wondering what to make of the few corporate updates.

Cam
Read Answer Asked by Cameron on March 18, 2020
Q: Good morning guys:
Just like every other investor my stocks in my tfsa are down big time. I have not sold anything as of yet and bought Boyd and MasterCard for my cash account with the recent dip . I know investors should stay the course and not sell quality companies , but just like 2008 it took a long time to get our money back that was lost . That being said is it a better move to sell all my stocks in my tfsa and take the loss . I take the remaining funds and buy quality companies that have been hit big time like a Disney , mastercard , visa , Boyd for example . I presently own 10 stocks in my tfsa and they are all equal weightings. Could you please elaborate what an investor should do in this situation
Thank you for great work .
- mark
Read Answer Asked by Mark on March 17, 2020
Q: Dear 5i team,
Thank you for the Special Report. Could you kindly confirm a few things about the graphs in it, please? My broker account doesn’t show graphs like yours, so what is the blue line and what is the brown filled-in background- I was thinking high and low stock prices, but noted the left and right y axis are different so I think I’ve not got that right. And how do you read the dark blue graph at the bottom- what is the stock’s ‘relative strength’ relative to?
Thanks so much!
Read Answer Asked by Hilary on March 16, 2020
Q: Hello 5i Gurus,
The central bank authorities at the Bank of England and the ECB have, this past week given authorization to all banks (domiciled in the UK or Europe) that they will be allowed to release ALL of their strategic counter cyclical funds that they normally hold in reserve. From what I remember, this would be several hundreds of billions of pounds or euros. Question is: Does the US and Canada have similar "counter cyclical funds" (not sure if this is the correct terminology)? that they can use to support the economy temporarily?
Read Answer Asked by KEITH on March 16, 2020
Q: Dear 5i;
I watch the Asian and Futures market in the evenings as a guide or possible indicator as to what North American markets might do the next morning / day and I'm sure I'm not alone in doing this .
I find it extremely irritating and unfair that I'm unable to take advantage of anticipated increases or decreases in the US and Can markets as a result of the Futures market being significantly up or down as the North American markets are already up or down big time before the markets are even open for trade ( ie the pre-market trading ).
Am i missing something here or are all of us ordinary investors stuck with this unfair system ( in my view anyways ) ?
Thanks
Bill C.
Read Answer Asked by Bill on March 13, 2020
Q: Hi there,

I'm currently in 100% cash. What are typical signs of a rebound and that the turbulence is over and how long does it usually take? In other words, traditionally what signals would one use to know when to buy back into the mark. Also, for simplicity sake, what ETF would you recommend buying to get torque coming of the bottom or that would lead out of the bottom/recession?

Thanks!
Read Answer Asked by Michael on March 12, 2020