A Comment -- General Comments From an Expert (A Commentary)

Converting a stock portfolio with a lot of capital gains to an ETF? The deadline is Christmas Eve Dec 24^th to have those capital gains pertinent to 2014. If you are prepared to wait for one more week, you can do the Sells and they can be counting against your 2015 tax liability, which allows you to push the tax bill back by 12 months. Make sure you keep the asset allocation consistent. On the other hand, you can do part of it for 2014, an additional part in 2015 and the rest in 2016. That will spread the tax bill out over 3 years.

30-day rule. If you sell a stock in a self-directed cash account with a capital gain, and at the same time purchase the same stock in a self-directed TFSA, does the 30 day rule apply? His understanding is that the answer is Yes.

Buying US stocks with Cdn$? He generally does not encourage doing this. If you have US$ already, then buy the US stocks with the US$'s.

What does it mean for an ETF to be Canadian dollar hedged and why is this advantageous? What you have to think about is whether or not the Canadian dollar is going to go up or down relative to the US dollar. The US dollar has been appreciating relative to the Canadian dollar for the past 4 or so months because of the drop in oil prices. As a result an unhedged position would be advantageous for you. However, if you ever thought the Canadian dollar was going up relative to the US dollar, putting the hedge in place is the way to save yourself from getting money back when you convert the currency back.

Gold bullion ETF? Doesn't think that there is one in bullion. He would not recommend gold in general. Gold has been hovering around $1200 and he does not think it is going to change anytime soon.

Energy. Has limited exposure with about 8% weighting to oil. The oil companies he has exposure to, although senior, have been impacted to a degree, but are going to be the long-term beneficiaries of this episode. This is a classic cycle where things are good, people become overextended, debt to cash flows get extreme, banks turn their backs on exploration companies and the larger, more stable producers gobble them up at cheaper prices. He expects that this will happen again. Although he has an 8% exposure to oil, he also has some beneficiaries in the retail space that will benefit from this type of situation. This spurs spending at all levels of the economic strata, but it also increases confidence. That not only increases the multiplier effect of dollars being spent, but the velocity of those dollars being spent.

Gordon Reid’s website articles. Everybody is welcome to read these articles on such things as estate taxes, T11 35 requirements if you hold foreign assets, wills and will estate allocations, market timing, simple math on bonds and how they actually work, etc. He also asks for ideas from anybody on an article and what they would like to see. You can email him at [email protected].

Markets. The positive showing today was a combination of things. Oil seems to have found a floor, at least for one day. The federal reserve is clearly not in any hurry to raise interest rates. The economic indicators that the Fed is looking at certainly shows there is no inflation. Headline inflation came down sharply today, by 0.3%. Even the core inflation, which strips out energy and food, was very, very reserved, so there is no reason at all to think that the Fed is going to lift interest rates, even in April. In the meantime, the US economy is picking up steam. He has been looking at things to buy, but it has been so volatile lately, he has been sitting on the sidelines and watching. By and large, every stock that he buys, pays a dividend.

Energy. For every winner from oil, there is a loser, in Canada particularly. The redistributive effect of low gasoline prices, particularly for the working poor in the US, is bigger than any policy that the Obama administration has managed to pass in 6 years. In other words, this is putting more spendable cash in the pockets of poor to middle income families in the US, which is going to be used for consumer spending, and is not going to end up in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or Iran. This is highly positive.

Insurance companies or banks? Insurance companies have traditionally looked for long assets because they have long risks. Right now long bonds are a particularly unrewarding asset class and insurance companies have to find something other to do. This means they are taking more risks. Although he is starting to buy some insurance companies, they are not a substitute for the banks. They don’t have the earnings power or the multiple sources of income that the banks have.

Preferred shares or bonds? 3 good things about preferred shares and 1 bad thing. 1.) They get the dividend tax credit, so you will pay a lower rate of tax than you’d pay on interest from bonds. 2.) The good quality preferred shares by banks or utility companies are currently paying around 3.5%-3.75% for a 5 year maturity, compared to bonds paying about 2.25%. 3.) Since 2009, virtually every preferred share issued in Canada, has been a rate reset preferred share, that will have a change in the dividend rate at the end of the first 5 years, based on an increment of whatever the Canada 5 year bond is paying at that time. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to own it for 5 years, at what might become a lower than market rate in year 3 or year 4. The bad thing about preferred shares is that they are quite illiquid. He prefers the Armageddon Prefs issued by the banks.

Which U.S. listed bank would you prefer? He is concerned about buying European banks for 2 reasons. First of all is currency risks. The euro could easily fall further against the US dollar. Also, they have a lot of suspect sovereign and bank paper from southern Europe that is underperforming. Big US banks are in a good environment right now. He doesn’t own Citibank (C-N) or Bank of America (BAC-N), but thinks they are going to do pretty well. The 2 big investment banks, Goldman Sachs (GS-N) and J.P. Morgan (JPM-N) are also doing well. For a pure commercial bank, Wells Fargo (WFC-N) is probably the class of the field. If he were going to buy another bank, it would probably be Wells Fargo.

Markets. He is not resource heavy and on purpose. You don’t control the price of your product in those businesses. Prefers to keep volatility of portfolios low. He owns some oil-related stocks. He has been worried about a global economic slowdown for many years, but did not see the oil glut coming. Oil is the ultimate self-correcting commodity. Spigots get turned off and have to be turned on very quickly. This is temporary situation and will come roaring back. It will take some time to stabilize over the next 6 months to a year. Investors need to take extra risks. There are some bargains. You have to look at companies with temporary problems. Dividends are very important as we will stay in a low interest rate environment.

Dividend paying equities. Everyone is different. It depends on your age. No extra ordinary returns in bonds. Occasional bargains. There are some opportunities in energy royalty finds.

Canadian Dollar. It has gotten hammered along with oil prices. It moves with oil short term and in the long term with interest rate differentials. Thinks it is bottoming out with oil here. Don’t sell Canadian $ and buy US$ at these levels.