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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: In reading Jason Heath's article in the Moneysaver he comments that there is no US withholding tax on US ETF's held in an RRSP, but there is withholding tax on the Canadian equivalent. I am in the process of rearranging our RRIFS and have been switching to more ETFs, including US based ones. Many ETFs have both a Canadian dollar and a US dollar version of the same fund. For convenience, to avoid opening a US dollar RRIF component, I elected to go with the Canadian equivalent.

Does the withholding tax also apply to RRIFs as well as RRSPs. If so it follows that perhaps I should convert a portion of our RRIF to US dollars and then purchase the US based ETFs in that account. It is not difficult to do, just a bit inconvenient.
Your thoughts please.
Russell
Read Answer Asked by Russell on June 05, 2019
Q: I'd like to simplify my rrsp and have a constant stream of income. I was thinking of selling my 30 stock over weight in canada and buy 5 or 6 ETF. Making easier to manage and have more investment outside of Canada. Do you like ZWC 20% weighting Ca, ZWH,20% weighting Us , ZWP20% weighting Eur , ZQQ 20% weighting Global tech company and Maybe ZRE for last 20% because reits usually goes up in a negative market. Please give me your opinion on my ETFs and your 6 picks would be? take as many question credit needed. Income and diversification globally are my goal.
Read Answer Asked by Hubert on June 05, 2019
Q: I have been looking for ways of boosting my income investments; last year I doubled my GIC's (still less than 10% of investments). This year I'm thinking of buying some preferred shares. They have been doing abysmally; many of the yearly lows are of prefs!
I recall the 1980's when long term bonds looked like a sure way to lose money. Investment grade credits paid over 10% interest for 30 years! I'm thinking out-of-fashion preferreds might be a great investment today (with less upside than 1980 bonds, of course).

John
Read Answer Asked by John on June 05, 2019
Q: I have recently been making significant adjustments to my portfolio, based on the results of Portfolio Analytics. In particular, I am significantly decreasing my financials and energy, and making large increases to my US and international weights.

Despite my changes, I am still overweight by 6% based on the recommended financials, and by 5% for energy. I am underweight international by about 6%. What is your recommended tolerance? How much leeway do you suggest for the recommended allocations?

Also, I am currently invested about 11% in VIGI. What is the maximum allocation you suggest for any ETF? I am a fan of the dividend aristocrats/growers strategy. Is there any other international dividend ETF which you would recommend (if possible, sold in Canadian dollars) along these lines?

For the US dividend growers, I have DGRO, VGG and ZDY.

Thank you for this incredible service that you offer!
Read Answer Asked by Dale on June 05, 2019
Q: Hi Peter, can I get your updated analysis on Steve Eisman's thesis on Canadian banks from today's BNN posts? Do you agree? What is it that he's seeing that we're not seeing (besides him flipping by shorts)? Would you be able to write a 5i blog post on how we can value banks (i.e. key ratios, ROA etc). Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Michael on June 05, 2019
Q: For the purpose of simplicity I would like your opinion on these 3 ETF portfolios.
My idea is to rebalance 1 / year.
non registered: VFV 30% VDU 30% VAB 40%
TFSA: VFV 50% VDU 50%
RRSP: VOO 30% VIG 30% IWO 30% VAB 10%
Any suggestions as to changing the etf's used for better tax purposes ?
Are there better etf's that you would recommend using?
Thanks for your help .
Victoria
Read Answer Asked by Anna on June 05, 2019
Q: Any thoughts on any of the Inner Spirit shares or offerings?
Read Answer Asked by William on June 05, 2019
Q: Over 11Mil. traded in HARV today.

Any news?

Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by claudette on June 05, 2019
Q: Two questions:

I read this morning about Canfor shutting down a BC interior mill due to lack of raw log inventory and processing costs. The article indicated that more mill shutdowns in BC will be inevitable due to the same factors.

Does WEF have a sufficiently large inventory of harvestable trees to avoid shutting down any of their mills in the foreseeable future? What about the processing costs at their mills. Are they at the lower cost end compared to other mills?

Thanks as always
Peter

Read Answer Asked by Peter on June 05, 2019
Q: Can you please give me your top Canadian dividend pick at the moment based on valuation, yield and dividend growth. I am overweight in financials. pipelines ,utilities and energy. Please have the pick not be one of the mentioned groups.
Read Answer Asked by Joe on June 05, 2019
Q: I have cash sitting in most of my accounts. I am retired and would like to put some of this cash to work for me. I don't even think my bank is providing interest on some of this cash. I have DRIPs in several bank stocks and telecommunication companies. Can you suggest some ETFs that might be useful here. I am interested primarily in ex-Canada and in seem of the other industries besides financial and telecommunications unless they are based outside of Canada. Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Lynn on June 05, 2019
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