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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: Hi Peter: When I sit back and take a look at the big picture and review how my portfolio performed during COVID-19 (so far), I try to see what lessons I can learn, then turn to how to apply those lessons to make my portfolio stronger.

I am a retired, dividend-income investor. I am a huge believer in asset allocation and have designed a portfolio, in my opinion, to be reasonably well diversified, although heavy to Canada. It WAS roughly 70% equities (including 32% foreign content) and 30% fixed income (roughly 15% insured annuities, 15% Fisgard Capital...both averaging in the 5-6% pre-tax range and minor cash). My equities are mostly blue chip, dividend payers, as you can see above. The 3 mutual funds are a very minor part of my portfolio, especially Eric's Energy Fund (<2%). I also receive a company pension and CPP-OAS which, when included, drops my equities to roughly 32%.

I use various metrics to monitor my portfolio, such as P/E, P/BV, P/CF, P/S, Beta, ROE, Div growth, Payout%, technical indicators like 200 mda. I am normally a buy-and-hold investor who trims/adds around a core position.

Periodically I measure how "at risk" my portfolio is relative to the overall market. I do this by prorating my portfolio using Beta. Based on equities only, I averaged 0.68 and for my entire portfolio I averaged 0.44. So, one would think that if the overall market (TSX) was to drop 30%, then I would have thought my portfolio would drop 44% to 68% of that, being in the range of 13% (overall) to 20% (equities only).

In actual fact, my entire portfolio dropped 27% from peak to trough vs the expected 13%...over double! I understand that EVERYTHING was sold off...almost no exceptions. So what do we learn from this and what changes should we consider? Do we accept that "sxxt happens" once in a while...you can't predict every event, accept it and move on? Should we consider increasing the cash component as a buffer? Or...is there something else to be learned here?

Thanks for you help...much appreciated...Steve
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on May 04, 2020
Q: For diversifying shareholdings, would any of these companies be appropriate?
LYB, for instance, appears to be on an upward trend. Your assessment and preferred choice is appreciated.
Thank you, Team!
Read Answer Asked by Sigrid on April 29, 2020
Q: Hello 5i,
Thank you for providing a clear and modulated message through the past 2 months.
For a 5-10 year hold could you rank the top 10 highest (TSX) yielding stocks with the safest dividends. ( strongest balance sheet, lowest payout ratio, historical dividend growth, etc).
Could you also rank them separately in terms of bounceback / growth potential over the next 2 to 3 years?
There may be redundancy in this question vs others asked and the 5i portfolios - so please take as many credits as necessary.
Thank you
Read Answer Asked by Delbert on April 28, 2020
Q: I carry these stocks in my RIF account with different level of loss. They do not seems to respond to any positive move in the market. I am loosing patience. Should I sell.
What replacements would you recommend that could recover faster in this type of market.
I value as usual your opinion
Raouf
Read Answer Asked by Raoul on April 15, 2020
Q: Considering a 5 year time frame, what would be your allocation toward cdn oil (xeg), cdn ag (ntr), utilities (zwu), fixed income (hfr) and US (zwa & xqq). Above average risk tolerance seeking yield and capital gain. Are there any other suggestions....LSPD would also be a holding. thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Curtis on April 09, 2020
Q: Retired dividend-income investor. I'm sitting on 15% cash that I created by taking profits and harvesting some losses. I have mapped out how to redeploy this cash to hit my asset allocation targets, both by sector as well as by individual holding. I had originally designed the re-entry on spreading the purchases over 6 months. Given that we now have information on different countries indicating that they MIGHT be showing signs of COVID slowly recovering and that the stock market is forward looking, would you adjust the 6 months time frame to 4 months? What's your crystal ball tell you...redeploy a little faster?

Also, the above equities are those that are candidates for topping up. Which would you hit up first?

Thanks for your help...Steve
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on April 08, 2020
Q: I have been reading the questions and answers on nutrien. I think Nutrien has been holding up very well in this market and with spring coming, their retail business,, having bought Agrium quite a while ago, the potential for food shortages, a great dividend, I think nutrien is close to a back up the truck investment.
But I don’t read financials so can you tell me how well capitalized they are. Thank you.
Read Answer Asked by Helen on April 03, 2020
Q: Which one of these, if any, would you sell to increase my tech sector allocation? Can you please rank them as well.
Alternatively, if they all have good long term potential, I have the flexibility to increase my equity allocation with additional cash. Please let me know you thoughts and thank you!
Read Answer Asked by Pierre on March 27, 2020
Q: If we have yet to reach the worst of the virus threat and if the current question mark regarding the direction the price of oil will take in the future poses a problem, I think we have yet to see the lowest prices for these companies. The question is how much further down their prices can go. If my theory is correct, at what price would you take an initial position in these companies?
Read Answer Asked by Les on March 25, 2020
Q: I am down on the stocks as follows but do not have offsetting capital gains to compensate for the losses - would you continue to hold or sell and please advise your rationale
Also, what criteria do you use for determining when this market has stopped it downward trend?
Read Answer Asked by David on March 17, 2020
Q: Hi,
Would you start buying these and in what order?
Thank you for great service.

Milan
Read Answer Asked by Milan on March 11, 2020
Q: Appreciate your report today on recommended stocks to track in this time of turmoil. Above is what additionally interests me and can't believe BMO @ $75.00 Could you review your thoughts for each going forward & thanks!
Read Answer Asked by Bruce on March 11, 2020
Q: Retired, conservative dividend-income investor with a "buy-and-hold & trim-add around a core position" strategy. At times like these, I take a fresh look at my holdings and ask two key questions. #1 = are there any of my equity holdings that have alarm bells going off? #2 = how safe are the dividends (knowing that no dividend is 100% secure)? The portfolio capital may rise or fall, but it is the continuation of the dividend that is more important.

For asset allocation purposes related to individual stocks (as opposed to sector allocations), I use the following:
5% targets = AQN, BCE, BNS, PBH, RY, TRP, WSP
4% targets = AD, AW, CSH, NWC
2% targets = LNF, MG, NTR
ETF targets = roughly 3-7%

Q#1 = are there any of these equities that you hear alarm bells?
Q#2 = are there any of these equities where you foresee dividend risk?
Q#3 = any thoughts on how I have my asset allocations set up (knowing it is a very personal decision?

Take a bunch of credits. Thanks for your help...Steve
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on March 06, 2020
Q: I follow your balanced portfolio and have taken opportunities in the past to harvest a tax loss and replace with another company in the same sector. I have losses in CCL.B and MX. Considering NTR in the same sector. Does this seem reasonable or is there another non gold company you would recommend. If so CCL and MX are each currently a 2% position. Would you sell both and buy a 4% NTR position or just sell one. If so which one?
Read Answer Asked by Paul on February 27, 2020
Q: I saw that Citigroup downgraded NTR to neutral from buy. Can you go over their report? They seem to now have a 12 month target of $47 down from $61 (please confirm that this target is in US $ and not Cdn $) Seems like NTR went down on Friday 14th due to this? What is your current view on NTR?
Read Answer Asked by Frank on February 18, 2020
Q: Hi 5i team,
I was wondering what your opinion is of the Morningstar Quant reports which can be found within TD Direct investing. For example, each of these stocks are noted as ‘undervalued’ or significantly‘undervalued’. As well, they have little or no moat, and some are high or very high risk. Their stock prices are/have dropped a bit.
Would you consider it realistic decision making to include them in the mix of info resources?

Also, could you kindly rank these stocks if one were doing this year’s TFSA amount- it’s a small sum so is it best applied to one stock or divided?

I have SU and CNQ, similar amounts invested in each and both are above water a little.

Please deduct however many credits you like. Thank you for helping me!
Read Answer Asked by Hilary on February 05, 2020
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