Dividend 15 Split Corp. (DFN-T)

He is not bullish on Canada and would not play dividends through this one.

They take a basket and they make a common shareholder that they give double dividend by leveraging and a preferred shareholder that they pay 5-5.5%. Sounds great but the basket of stocks has to go up significantly in a rapid way if not you lose money. This is the opposite to buy and hold.

The credit rating is lower on these splits than on dividend shares. Don't waste your time. Buy individual preferred shares.

They take bank stocks, or insurance and in some case energy companies, and then they split it internally into preferred shares or common shares, and then they write covered calls on the common shares. They are getting yields around 13-14%. That brings up the question: How is that possible? He’s been doing coverage calls for 30 years, if he get 10% or 12% he is very pleased, but you’re never going to do that consistently. What they’ve got is a very very good yield but if you take a look at the volatility, and there's a lot of volatility, in 2016 the market was down 15% and this stock was down 60%. In 2007-2008, the market was down 60% and this was down 80%. It’s a yield play. Never trust the yield. You have to look behind and see what’s going on there and what’s creating the yield. He wouldn’t touch this.

Doesn’t like this and never has. They take bank shares and divide them up, so you have some that are newer issues, the preferreds, and they split off the equity portion. Then they write Calls on the equity portion. You are basically getting the yield from the preferred and the yield from the equity portion, which is in fact leveraged. You have to ask, if something is paying 6%, 7%, 8%, and the highest paying dividend on this is only 4%, where is it coming from? If you compare this against ZWB-T or ZEB-T, they far outperformed this. You’re getting a decent dividend, but you are not getting any performance.

Banks, insurance companies, pipelines – all the big dividend payers. He does not mind owning any of these things. It is diversified among a couple of sectors. He has no strong opinion either way. Not a bad buy below $11.

A closed end fund. They buy financials, and then issue a split share to the purchasers, one part preferred and the other equity. Whenever he looks at something offers a 10%-11% yield, and none of the components stocks are paying that, that raises a question. If he were selling Covered Calls, he would expect to get 10%-11% if he were selling the Calls against a whole basket of stocks that he had purchased. On this, that only happens sometimes, not all the time. There is some leverage going on here. Never trust yield.

This really depends on the underlying basket. They come to the market and usually strip out the common shares versus preferred shares. They take the capital from the preferreds, concentrate it and lever it up on the underlying common stock. As a result, you have a much bigger dividend, but you need to have the stocks working for you. If they don’t, you can get twice the risk, and there is usually an expiry of 5-10 years and you can be in a situation of a capital loss.

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (DFN-T) or Dividend 15 Split Corp. II (DF-T)? Both are Split shares. This one is 15 banks and financial institutions in Canada and the US. You have a capital share which is paying a 16% dividend, which comes back to the unit Holder. You are just getting the capital growth that is coming from the banks. He wouldn’t buy both, because you are looking for either growth or income. He would use one or the other and build that in your portfolio.

This holds 15 stocks, both Canadian and US banks. He likes this. If you are going to the capital share on that, that is probably the way he would play it if you are a growth investor. If you are an income seeking investor, he thinks you can be pretty comfortable with the dividend and the preferred share will stay intact, and you will be fine.

If he has a right product, this is one where they split it off and preferreds go one way and the equity holders get more of a leveraged play on the dividend basket. If the mechanics are set up properly, this can be really rewarding for people that have a view that dividend stocks can go higher, which is his view. He is not sure he would use this for his clients, as they really enjoy getting their dividends.

If you think interest rates are going to rise at some point later in the year, these things will continue to do well. This is leveraged to a certain sector in the economy, and if that drops, you can suffer. The return you are getting on this is the yield. If you Buy call options on this, that would play out and you do very well. This is a leveraged exposure to a sector that has done very well.