Investment Q&A

Q: Following Trudeau's announcement of a tax grab on Canadian Banks, the Royal Bank fell the least amount by a decent margin. Do you have any insight as to why, or is it simply because the Royal is the biggest?

Q: I am going into retirement and below are the weightings of stocks held in my portfolio. Although the portfolio performed okay over the years, I wonder if there is too much concentration and would appreciate your ideas on diversification given the economic times we live in. My portfolio is about $2M with an investment loan of $150K for which I use the dividends to repay. Thanks. BNS 37%, TD 18%, CM 14%, BMO 14%, BCE 6%, SRN.UN 6%, RY 4%, POW 1%

Q: I hold the Canadian banks in my dividend portfolio and they have served me well over the years as a core hold.
Should I reconsider these holdings in light of new taxation rules being suggested?

Q: I would like to add a few (2-4) financial companies to my non-registered investment portfolio. Would appreciate 5i's help in ranking the above names based on total return potential for a 3-5 year hold. Please add any names you feel belong to the lineup, ranked appropriately, Thank you.

Q: Would like to create a 10-15 stock portfolio out the securities listed above, to meet my retirement income and growth needs, for a long term hold.
CPD is my current, imperfect proxy for the fixed income portion of my portfolio.
CVE, CNQ, SU would be the only opportunistic (and highly correlated) purchases, to take advantage of the current low valuations for the petroleum industry. These would be sold if the oil & gas market's prospects change.
Please rank all the securities on the basis of return potential over 2-3 years as the primary criteria,
Please eliminate any stock which does not have adequate balance sheet strength, from the lineup.
Please add to the lineup all securites that would facilitate the creation of a defensible, well-diversified, long term portfolio - especially if it is in a sector that I have overlooked.

Thank you for your expertise, and willingness to help me sleep a bit more soundly.

Q: Hello. I continue to see positive comments from 5i about growth potential for GSY. I would like to add it my financial sector but that would require selling one of my current financial stocks in order to maintain the assigned weight. Of the stocks listed can you put in order the stocks you might sell to a\quire GSY. Alternatively, does it make sense to keep the current stocks, which are all doing well and for the most part paying dividends and just add GSY, changing the weightng of the portfolio?

Q: I bought all 3 of these banks a couple of years ago: Royal Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and TD. At that time all 3 of purchase prices were much lower than today's stock prices. I would like to add to my holdings of each. Would you wait until the prices come down a little, or is it more probable at this point that prices will continue to go up? Thank you.

Q: I am currently way overweight in Canadian banks and would like to gradually cut my overall exposure to about half of my present total value. Would you please rank the above stocks in light of each expected Total Return over the next 3 - 5 years?
Many thanks.

Q: You have mentioned several times that it is expected that later this year the big banks will be given a free hand in allowing dividend increases, is there any analyst guidance/guesses out there on what sort of increase is 'expected' from the banks over the next 1-2 years (and may be baked in to the share price at the moment). Or is it expected to be more a case of just going back to a more normal cycle of increases rather than catching up.

Q: Are the banks still cheap in your opinion? Fwd PE for RY/TD 11.7x, CM 10.8x with the others around the same levels. What do you expect from them over the next 12-24 months?

Q: Hi,
If I wanted/could buy only one Canadian bank, which one would it be today and why?
Thanks

Q: Good morning,
Q1. Is it reasonable to assume that ZEB ETF's total return would be the same as that of holding each of the individual bank stocks in the exact same proportion as in the ZEB ETF minus the MER (0.60%) + or - the tracking error?
Q2. Given, that the relatively high MER (0.60%) of holding ZEB, would it be better over the long run to simply own 2 or three of the best big banks and if so which two or three banks would you recommend buying and holding for ever.

Q: If you had to sell all or some shares of one of the 5 big Canadian banks to generate some cash, which would you choose and why?

Thanks very much!

Q: I'm heavy in financial stocks and would like to reduce the number of holdings. In what order from best to least would you rank these companies for a long term hold. I'd like to mention that this question function is a tremendous feature. Thanks for the excellent and speedy answers to my previous questions. I feel very supported.

Q: Non-registered account with goal of primarily dividend income has done quite well, with all of the noted holdings nicely in positive territory. In hind sight MG and SYZ would have been in a registered account. SYZ is up 63%, MG 24%.
Overall account yield is currently 3.8%. Would prefer it closer to 5%
Need some help with this "good problem". Take capital gain now and move into yieldier positions, or let running stocks run and deal with bigger gain in future?
If I move out of some of the growthier stocks, which div payers minimum 3% yield to move into?
Overall portfolio diversification is pretty decent, and diversification within this account does not have to be perfect - dividend security within this account is more important.

Thanks,
Jim

Q: Taking these 7 income oriented equities and looking to rank them for risk in a correction situation moving forward it seems that if we use the March 2020 correction as a guide FTS and BCE dropped the least (28%) followed by RY (33%) then TD,BNS, AQN (35-37%) with SLF trailing the pack at 46%. The reason behind any future correction could of course be different than a virus-induced shutdown of the economy. But still your ranking of safest to least safe is appreciated and if your answer would be different depending on the cause of the correction then your comment on that would be nice to have as well. Thank you for assisting me in trying to build the most secure portion of my income strategy. Any additional equities that fit in the lowest downside category that you might suggest would also be most welcome.

Q: Retired, dividend-income investor. I am normally a buy-and-hold investor for the very long term (RBC = blue chip, hold forever; while in a higher risk and associated lower weighting category, I hold Alaris forever). I currently hold SLF but have been reviewing/comparing its performance with BMO. The 10 year, 5 year and 3 year charts favor Sunlife, but the 1 year and shorter duration charts favor BMO. There appears to be a significant inflection point starting in November 2020.

Can you explain what occurred around that time? Is it simply the reflation of the economy favoring BMO relative to SLF? Do you see this continuing for the next period of time or do you see SLF playing catch-up?

Thanks for your help...Steve

Q: For growth and potential dividend increases, would you please rank the six Canadian banks (the ‘big 5’ plus National) in order of preference to buy now?
Thanks!

Q: Hello, I need to liquidate some of the stocks listed. Disregarding sector diversification, in what order should I do this? Thanks for your help.

Q: I am retired and invest in primarily blue chip, dividend paying stock. In my regular investment account I hold the following Canadian bank stocks, RY,BNS,TD.
In my RRSP I hold all my US stock which includes JPM and C. I am considering selling my Citibank stock and using the proceeds to buy more JPM.
I am thinking JPM has better upside and is generally a better run company. Any thoughts?