Hey there. Thank you for posting this here, it's a little easier to answer a question like this on the Q and A than it is the Livechat, because it requires a bit of an explanation.
Our model portfolios are the Canadian equities portion only.
In your case, the Boomer Aggressive portfolio had a starting value of $10,000, but contains only 55% equities. You'll see this listed in the "Portfolio Description & Goals" section.
That means we reserved the remaining $4500 for things like fixed income investments (bonds for example), cash, or even exposure south of the border through an ETF to diversify a bit more. This is why we don't track this portion of the portfolio in terms of returns, because every investor is different. An example, I(Dan Kent) personally do not invest in bonds, but I know lots of people who like them.
Ultimately though, the allocation is completely up to you. You can lower it or raise it however you please.
Obviously right now with interest rates so low, bonds aren't attractive to most due to fears of rates rising and their bond prices falling, but that is an entirely separate subject.
In terms of allocations, I'll give you our originals when the portfolio was made. You're not the first to ask about this, so chances are we will be adding it to all of them. Keep in mind, these allocations are based on the $5500 invested in equities.
TD: 7.7%
FTS: 8.5%
SHOP: 10.5%
PKI: 7.3%
TRP: 9.75%
DOL: 8.8%
MFC: 7.2%
T: 10.9%
EMA: 8.9%
CTC.A: 7.9%
BNS: 7.8%
So, if you were to follow the portfolio completely, you would be investing 55% or $16,500 into these equities. DOL would make up 8.8% of that, or $1452.
Now, the landscape has changed quite a bit since we developed these portfolios. Would we still place a 10.5% allocation in Shopify at these price levels? We'd be reluctant to do so. Would we be more inclined, especially considering that this is a boomer portfolio that's strategy is income based, to maybe lower our allocation of Shopify and increase the Canadian banks? That could be an option. There are a ton of ways you can modify and form these portfolios how you'd like, and set them up for your own goals.
If you'll notice, we have $1310 in cash in the portfolio right now as well, resulting from a sale of half our Shopify position. We will be purchasing a new stock when we do our portfolio reviews soon.