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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: Blackline (BL) seems to share similarities with Lightspeed (LSPD) except that, instead of targeting restaurants and small retailers, it focuses on providing SAAS to accounting departments in small and medium-sized firms. Can you provide any insights on BL from your Bloomberg terminal or any other research that has been done on the company?
Robert
Read Answer Asked by Robert on July 15, 2019
Q: I have always considered ALC to be a proxy (maybe a weak proxy) on the iron ore pellets market. I know ALC ship grain and petroleum too. Of course ALC has other issues like water levels in the Great Lakes as well as replacing an aging fleet which has been slowed down as a number of ships supposed to be delivered weren’t due to problems with the shipyards defaulting or failing to deliver. Nonetheless I would have expected to have seen the share price of ALC strengthen more than it has with LIF doing so well. Am I missing something?
Thanks,
Jim
Read Answer Asked by James on July 15, 2019
Q: Is LIF selling more pellets this year or is the price of the pellets simply higher. I do find it odd that the prices of other industrial minerals (copper, zinc, etc.) are weak but iron ore seems to be strong or possibly just stronger than prior years. I would have thought the prices of industrial minerals would move as a group. I have always assumed iron ore pellets are too large a market to be manipulated. Do you agree?
Thanks,
Jim
Read Answer Asked by James on July 15, 2019
Q: I have exposure to gold in the above companies. I'd appreciate any comments you may have in regards to whether to dump or hold, and which gold companies may provide a good alternative at present. I'm thinking some consolidation might be a good idea (too many positions). Thanks.
AGI, ATC, ABX, GFI, GSV, OGC, PVG, SBB
Read Answer Asked by Brad on July 15, 2019
Q: Would you be able to compare these two companies or are they too different? If I understand correctly they are both in the materials sector, are well managed and are companies which combine some growth along with a healthy dividend. Possibly MX has more of a global reach and so has some control over its destiny while LIF is a royalty company and simply reflects the current price of iron ore pellets. If I understand correctly LIF would have a risk of ore exhaustion or depletion even though the Labrador Trough has been a source of high quality pellets for years now. MX buys hydrocarbons (oil and gas) to make methanol so their input costs should be low yet methanol prices must be even lower so we have a problem. You note MX is projected to have 60% growth next year which is a high number but the stock continues to decline. Based on your years of experience do you feel this is a valid projection? Is the 60% number based on anticipated recovering demand or is the company opening a bunch of new factories next year?
Any other thoughts you have would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jim
Read Answer Asked by James on July 15, 2019
Q: 2:00 PM 7/14/2019
I expect to be parking a lot of cash in our 4 TDWaterhouse accounts... two RRIFs and two TFSAs
I want to be sure the money is covered by CDIC insurance
.--------------------------------------------
The CDIC site states :
Eligible deposits are insured separately in each of seven categories:
in one name
in more than one name
in a RRSP
in a RRIF
in a TFSA
in trust
for paying taxes on mortgaged properties
.-------------------------------------------
From the CDIC website :
We insure eligible deposits at each member institution up to a maximum of $100,000 (principal and interest combined) per depositor per insured category.
Eligible deposits include:
1. Savings accounts
2. Chequing accounts
3. Term deposits, (such as GICs) with original terms to maturity of five years or less

Uninsured financial products include:
1. mutual funds (including money market funds), stocks and bonds
2. term deposits, such as GICs, with original terms to maturity greater than five years;
3. foreign currency deposits (e.g., U.S. dollars);
-------------------------------------------
The question is just what specific securities are eligible.
Do the :
1. TD "savings" account TDB8150,
2. and the Purpose High Interest Savings ETF PSA.TO
3. and the Horizons Active Floating Rate Bond ETF Common HFR.TO
all qualify or are they considered to be "Mutual Funds"

So it looks as though just <5 yr GICs, and cash sitting uninvested in these accounts actually qualify

Can you please clarify this issue and tell me just what savings vehicles actually do qualify?
Thank you.

Read Answer Asked by Paul on July 15, 2019
Q: Quite a smackdown on these stocks today. I'm still not in this group, but wondering if I shouldn't dip into them a bit. In what order would you rate these, in terms of (potential) viability?

I notice that Hexo's company profile states it's a "consumer packaged goods cannabis company" ... which suggests, then, that they don't grow their own. Is it better, in this industry, to grow your own ... or to be at arm's length, and be more of a repackager and distributor?

Even with the smackdown, would you (Peter or Ryan) get into the sector at all?
Read Answer Asked by Sylvia on July 15, 2019
Q: In order to reduce Canadian content, increase US and International content and balance our equity portfolio by industry,I would appreciate your help.Since we have been drawing on our RIFs for a number of years (23) and plan to continue,most of the transactions will be in our TFSAs.
1)sell Telus and replace it with a similar US or International investment.Would you recommend doing this and could you suggest 2 or 3 replacements.
2)sell Power Financial and Alaris Royalty and replace them with similar non-Canadian investments.Could you suggest 2 or 3 financial investments.
I do not feel comfortable adding currency changes to the mix or any withholding tax on dividends,but I do not see any alternatives.
Once this is completed,I plan to work on our industry allocations.
Thanks in advance for you assistance.
Read Answer Asked by James Robertson on July 15, 2019
Q: Hello Folks:
We have held Costco in our U.S. equity portfolio for several years (approx 3% of our portfolio). As It has done very well we are considering increasing our position a few percentage points. At it's current high value do you deem this a worthwhile bet. We will likely raise the money by reducing our position in Bank of America; we also hold a 5% position in J.P. Morgan. As long time Chevron investors we could alternately reduce this position for more Costco. Thanks for your fabulous service.
brian
Read Answer Asked by Brian on July 15, 2019
Q: Hi 5i, Alaris announced bad news a while back when one of the companies it was financing ran into trouble and suspended payments to Alaris. At that time the AD share price was around $22 I think and the bad news drove it back down into the teens. Since then it has had three good news announcements. First, it announced that the trouble situation was not a worst case scenario and there was a reasonable prospect of AD getting a significant recovery from it. The next two good news announcements involved about $130M of new or additional investments on terms acceptable to Alaris. My question is: at this point, does it make sense to view Alaris' business (not the shares) as fully recovered from the effects of the investment that went sour, or do they still have some work to do to get back on track? Since the bad news first hit, the shares have had difficulty getting any traction above $20. Thanks for any comments!
Read Answer Asked by Lance on July 15, 2019
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