jcub you are greatly to be congratulated for keeping such a good eye on your investments and for having the courage to bring your portfolio and your concerns here to this forum.
along with others, i am concerned about the wisdom of your advisor's recommendations. I sincerely hope you will put everything on hold for a few more weeks, during which time you might gather up a few more of our opinions here (such as they are !!) and perhaps voyage on to obtain one or two additional opinions from other financial advisors (licensed in-the-flesh advisors, as opposed to virtual advisors.)
my greatest concern is with the proportionately large proposal of buying Meritage income growth. I did look at their website and at all the material for this fund, and frankly i recoiled in horror. This is a fund of funds. It holds nothing but 10 other mutual funds. Granted, they are reasonably selected, but you will probably be paying 2 layers of fund management fees. This would be enough to totally turn me off.
to make matters worse, there is probably a load fee to buy Meritage, whereas the component funds or equivalents thereto can be purchased load-free.
in addition, i noted that this Meritage income growth portfolio returned a meagre 21.40% in 2009, a year in which many common stocks doubled. The holding-down of this return was probably caused by the large fixed-income component, so the fund cannot be slighted for this reason, as its mission is to offer a significant income fraction. Nevertheless, i see nothing to recommend this high-fee fund either for yourself or for anyone else. I believe the risk exists that your advisor is recommending it because he is herding as many of his clients as he can into a small selected handful of funds in order to increase his trailer fees (alas, they do behave like that.)
what to do? my suggestion would be to merely stay with the CIBC income fund and the ML Accelerator fund for the time being, while you search for other and better suggestions at a leisurely pace.
i have assumed that nearly all of the $7000 potential loss you mention arises from ML accelerator, because ordinarily speaking a purely income fund like the CIBC should not have declined that much in market price.
re this loss: among things to consider are whether you can apply it against gains this year; or whether you can carry it back to claim credit for declared capital gains in prior years; or whether you might carry forward such a loss because you anticipate future capital gains.
re the Renaissance holding: this is a fairly large proportion (about one-quarter) of your portfolio. Renaissance currently pays .90%. Savings accounts at ING currently pay 1.20%, so there is a difference that can be important if enough money is at stake. Please remember, though, that you'd have to open and manage an ING account yourself. It's not difficult to do - i've had one for years & they work like a charm. You can carry out transactions either online or by telephone with live representatives. But please remember that your advisor will probably oppose your moving the cash to ING, because it will mean taking one-quarter of your portfolio away from his grasp. By the way, i personally believe that a cash or cash-equivalent proportion of approximately 20-30% is appropriate for someone in your age bracket, but others may have different views.
wishing you all the best, and hoping you will proceed slowly and carefully.