Investment Q&A

Q: Good morning, have cash in one of my registered account and thinking of adding to NTR or GILD. Have both & both are down. Realising they are totally different types of co's, which would be better to add to longer term (for capital & dividend appreciation).
Thank you

Q: My Canadian dividend portfolio lacks exposure to materials. I currently hold CCL.B and was considering adding one position in SJ, NTR, or BOS. My goal is owning a good business at a sound valuation with prospects of dividend growth for at a long term. I consider the companies the best in the Canadian universer of stocks when it comes to materials. I am leaning towards NTR, but I am hesitant because I try not to invest in businesses that are very sensitive to commodities prices. Can you comment on these companies, their management, risks, and outlook? What do you think is the best option among the three?

Q: Hello Peter,
If you owned these as full-positioned laggards in your portfolio, but were also a patient, long-term investor and appreciated the dividends, which of the following would you currently hold, sell or add to at this time? FSZ, AW.UN, CSH.UN, T, EWJ, HCG, MX, KBL, APR.UN, ZPR, NTR, TECK.B and CN?

Q: I realize the whole market pulled back today but Nutrien seems to be on a real downward trend for about a week now. Has there some news that is causing this, I haven't noticed anything particularly negative is recent reports. Please advise if there is something other than a volatile market pulling this stock down.

Also, would you consider this stock a good hold for the next 3 years? I currently hold this and am down close to 25% so am trying to determine if I ride it out or cut my losses.

thanks for your advice.
Paula

Q: Morning 5i,

As someone hoping their is a significant pull back. Seeing the overvalued stretching....

I am looking to add some diversification and growth with the "safest" possible.

My picks are;
BAM.A
BYD
REAL
OTEX
GSY
ATD.B
NTR
CNR
Is their additional ones that you can suggest or a couple swaps that are "better" overall.

Thank you for all the tireless fun!

Q: Hi folks, please get opinion on Q results for Nutrien, and guidance going forward. Would you be a buyer at $50sh, with nice dividend, or would a better option in Ag space be Mosaic mos/n or Ag Atn/t, thanks, jb Piedmont QC

Q: NTR: never seems to report EPS in-line with guidance, price taker for fertilizers & has high P.R.. Positive side: low debt., retail business with higher margins than commodities. Why was recent Q so bad? Would now be a good time to buy this stock & is dividend sustainable?

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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?

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?

Q: Hi,
Would you start buying these and in what order?
Thank you for great service.

Milan

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!

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