Thanks for sharing, SargeX. Great info for sure.
SargeX wrote: I was thinking it might be worth sharing a few thoughts. I'm a 68 year old retiree without a pension so my wife & I live entirely off dividend income, my CPP, and our OAS. I've been retired for about 8.5 years and my wife was stay at home so minimal CPP.
I basically developed our investment strategy on my own and have learnt some good lessons. I like to think that I haven't made any "mistakes" but sure have had a quite a number of what I call prefer to call "learning lessons".
I wish that there was more internet info and forums back when I was figuring this out. I know you should always filter what people post so take this whichever way you want. It is not intended as advice but rather just a sharing of a few thoughts. As an aside, I quite enjoy Stockhouse and have enjoyed reading quite a few posters, have had some good laughs, and have actually gotten a few ideas from other posters that have worked out quite well. Of course, I did my own DD before making any moves.
As just mentioned in my last post, here's the main part of our portfolio (we also hold a medium position in ETFs FIE and ZWB):
Banks - BMO,BNS,RY,TD
Midstream: ENB,KEY.PPL.TRP
Utils: AQN,CPX,EMA,FTS
Telcos: BCE.T
REITs: DIR.UN,GRT.UN,NWH.UN
Of these, I think all 4 midstreamers and CPX are great buys for shorter term capital appreciation. For long term buy & hold, I like RY, TD, ENB, TRP, EMA, FTS, and BCE.
My wife & I have been setting aside some dough for our 5 grandkids and I've been managing that as well. I've found this required quite a different approach as it's only $2.5k per kid per year and the oldest grandchild is 12 so some of it is a little shorter timeframe than I'm used to.
What I've decided is that if an investor has < $200k, they are probably best off just buying a couple ETFs. I like VDY and ZWB and if in the accumulation phase, VEQT,
For a portfolio of 200-900k, I'd probably go with 9 or so evenly distributed stocks that I call the wide moaters - BNS,RY,TD, ENB,TRP, BCE,T, EMA,FTS. For a > 900k portfolio, I'd keep all the wide moaters and add accordingly.
Anyway, there's my thoughts. Good luck with whatever strategy you use/decide on but I reallty think the key thng to do is to have a strategy that you stick with and tweak as needed.
Good luck to all
Sarge