HOLD

The Canadian market got clobbered last year. This one has not fully recovered yet. He would not abandon ship. It has not made money because the market has not made any money. This is solid and he would not be selling it.

HOLD

Continue Exposure to XBB-T? Everyone is disappointed in the return on bonds. The XBB-T is a mid-term bond ETF. The return is low but that does not mean you should be piling into equities. You are adding to risk if you don’t have this exposure. If you sell, then buy some money market.

DON'T BUY

Dogs of the DOW. The idea is that you look at the DOW stocks and buy the ones that are not performing. It is an old concept and he is not thrilled with it. It does not always work.

BUY

Investment for an account with no withdrawals for 10-15 years – ETF recommendation including a drip. Pretty much all ETF providers will do a drip. You could buy an S&P 500 ETF.

N/A

Moving to US for more Liquidity in Options. There are a lot of Canadian stocks that are interlisted in the US and Americans tend to pay higher option premiums, so you could consider these.

BUY

It is cheap. You have to be careful of bank and energy exposure and may want to look at a different dividend ETF if you already have a lot of exposure to these sectors. As a product there is nothing wrong with it.

TOP PICK

Broad US market, S&P 500 index. It has $200 Billion in assets. It is the largest ETF of them all. A lot of people have domestic and foreign ETFs, but no US ETFs. This represents the whole US market. Long term he is very bullish on the US. It trades in US$.

TOP PICK

Hedged US bank ETF. You had to wait to get into this sector until the litigation feast was over. The US banks have lagged the industry.

TOP PICK

He likes the equal weight approach. He is looking for a trade here. You could see a bit of a lift on this one.

RISKY

It would be his favourite Japan ETF because as it is hedged, but he would not buy Japan right now. The currency is all over the place. He is not keen on Japan’s prospects. He prefers the US.

DON'T BUY

Low volatility S&P 500. There has not been a huge gain since last year. There may be another low volatility ETF that has done better, such as ZMV-T. Watch these things because sometimes the price has been driven up. He may have one of them for a few clients.

N/A

Covered Call Correct Value when stock is not actively traded. You can use the Black Scholes model and that gives you the correct price, but it does not say you are going to get it. It does not tell you what the market maker is going to give you. That is one reason he deals mostly with the Canadian banks where there is huge volume.

N/A

Markets. The Bank of England just cut interest rates, which was no surprise. Given the situation in the UK where there is a lot of uncertainty over the next 2 years, he expects to see slowing growth over the rest of this year, and probably into next year. There are going to be low rates there for a lot longer than people think. Brexit is a complicated issue, and the issue of very low rates has very big implications globally, and people are not thinking about that. That also has real implications for life insurers.

DON'T BUY

3 to 10 Year Hold? Lifecos have long tails. It’s not like car insurance where every year rates are redone. Life insurance policies are for 5-10-20 years, so repricing is very difficult for them. They used to invest in bonds to cover liabilities, but can’t do that as easily anymore because rates are so low, which is pushing them into riskier parts of the investment curve. They missed their numbers by about 13%, although Asia did well for them. Not expensive, but doesn’t see how they make a lot of money going forward. He would rather own a bank for that time horizon.

COMMENT

Unlike AT&T (T-N), it took a big risk by putting fibre in the ground. They bought AOL and part of Yahoo. Had a joint venture with Vodafone on the wireless side and bought them out. Thinks they’re trying to create a 3rd stream of revenue from advertising and tie it into their wireless business, and maybe their line business. Trading at about 17X earnings and feels the dividend is safe. You have to see if they can execute on Yahoo. Thinks you can own it and it will do well, but these are the risk factors. Dividend yield of 4.2%.