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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: What are the risks of in investing in ECN.PR.A? What I am alluding to is that these preferred shares have a guaranteed 6.5% return which is an extraordinary rate of return compared to other fixed income vehicles. To me, this means that ECN must be a high risk company, but from what I have researched so far it is not. Are there any other risks that I am not aware of?
Read Answer Asked by Robert on December 08, 2017
Q: Cipher is improving and the stock is trending up. With that being said, Knight looks better for the long term if they ever deploy their cash hoard. I currently have a half position in Cipher where a tax loss can be harvested. Take the tax loss and top up my position in Knight while it's down?
Thanks!
Read Answer Asked by WAYNE on December 08, 2017
Q: I have to sell some of my shares in my registered LIF Account by the end of the year. Which of the two mentioned above should I lighten up on. XCB looks flat and has only a small dividend. I would prefer to keep my CSH.UN for long term.
What is your opinion and reasoning.
Thank you!
Read Answer Asked by ALBERT on December 08, 2017
Q: I've got excess cash in my RRSP, waiting to be deployed in the event of a downturn. I'm thinking of converting some of it to bonds while I wait, so as to earn a bit more than a high interest savings account can offer. I was wondering if you could recommend a few ETFs for that purpose. The ideal bond ETFs would be safe, rapidly deployable to cash, with a decent yield and likely to become more attractive investments themselves in the event of a downturn. Thanks for any suggestions. If you could add a short note about what would be the main risk to those ETFs, I'd appreciate it.
Read Answer Asked by Brian on December 08, 2017
Q: Peter; Re Tamara,s question on Bitcoin today. I think you should cross reference the question under “bitcoin” as it is the best and most comprehensive explanation of it I have read. I can now pass it on to my grandchildren who might need to know exactly what it is.
Rod
Read Answer Asked by Rodney on December 08, 2017
Q: I have owned RNW for a couple of years now, primarily for income from its healthy dividend. Also own AQN, FTS, NPI and BEP.UN in the utilities sector. I'm still ahead on RNW by about 18% despite the recent price drop, but wonder if the stock simply has too many issues these days. This includes the suggested lack of future growth, an apparent problem in Australia, and potential issues with its parent company TA. Is it maybe time to sell?
Read Answer Asked by Thomas on December 08, 2017
Q: My brokerage has placed a note on my non-registered account concerning a stock that has ceased trading and is in receivership/bankruptcy. They are offering to accept these shares as a gift and remove them from my account screen.

Is this a better solution to filing a 50(1)?
Would CRA not be “concerned” that I filed a sale at $0 without a 50(1)?

You can see that my main concern here is not attracting the attention of CRA. Of course, if I gift the shares, I would receive nothing should the receive distribute any moneys when all creditors have been paid.

I cannot see the advantage of the “gifting” of these shares to my broker. Any insights?
Read Answer Asked by Danny on December 08, 2017
Q: Hi Peter & team,

Over the years I have been focused on paying off my mortgage and putting the majority of any savings I have into my RRSP account and contributing into my child's RESP account. As a result, the RRSP account has over 80% of the savings that I have accumulated to this point while my TFSA and non-registered accounts total the remaining 20%. I finally have paid off my mortgage and I was wondering whether I should now be focusing on putting most of my money into the TFSA and non-registered accounts, so that the ratio between the RRSP/TFSA/non-registered accounts become more balanced? Is there such thing as a good balance between the 3 types of accounts?

Thanks for the wonderful work and all the insightful answers you provide.

Marvin
Read Answer Asked by Marvin on December 07, 2017
Q: I have $500k in cash to invest. Getting into the market with current economy and market conditions is hard for me to do. I have asked around at other firms and of course the answer has always been "Get in now. why wait", but I believe that they are biased because they will make their fees from me even if I lose money during a market correction.

As an example I did some back calculations using a tool on Steadyhand's web page and the rate of return from 2007 to 2016 compared to 2008 to 2016 is significantly different. By waiting one year the annual ROR changes by almost 100% (5% 2007-2016, 11% 2008-2016). It is interesting how nobody ever talks about this.

I would like to wait until the market correction happens, whenever that may be, but I need some unbiased advice.

I realize that this question has probably been asked before but I think that the answer to this question has to take into account current conditions and where the market is compared to historical norms and averages.

If I was using one of the 5i portfolios it would be the Income portfolio.
Read Answer Asked by Stephen on December 07, 2017
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