I've spoken to my broker about this a couple of times and he's really been against it. Basically said 'why risk your house for an investment?' and that you really need to know what you're doing...
He's basically saved me from myself in not actually refusing my requests for HELOC or more money tied to the house...but just highly recommending against it with the caveat 'I'll do it if you want. I make more money, but you're the one taking all the risk and I don't recommend giving the bank any more fingers into your house than absolutely necessary.'
With house price runup, my approved HELOC plus mortgage amount is about 40% of the FMV of the house. I pulled <20% of the HELOC. I'm not really risking the house but I am clearly risking more years to pay off the loan (and probably a credit score hit as I am accessing additional credit). Worst case, investments go to zero (unlikely as I am buying funds not individual companies with this money) and I can't afford to service the heloc debt (which would require an income hit and interest hike). Mortgage is up in two years. Make it until then and roll heloc into mortgage. Adds a few years to the back end, total borrowed amount still less than original mortgage amount, size of heloc decreases (unless they re-appraise the house in which case size of heloc goes way up).
In the interest of making mortgage revewal more flexible, I think all dividends between now and then will be used to reduce heloc. After mortgage is renewed, re-evaluate whether to change to drips, liquidate and abort this strategy or borrow more.
Stupid housing prices have warped my sense of money. I think this has happened to many people. With most houses now in low seven figures, four figure loans that hurt when coming out of salary are entirely inconsequential on the books. To try to make any meaningful change, at least five figures are required (and probably six but I like to be married and she may kill me). Paying that back from conventional working income is very painful.
EDIT:
FWIW, one up, 12 down today. On the upside, the dollar value up substantially exceeds the dollar value down.
Scotia itrade has a programming hiccup in flightdesk. For the top P/L per day chart, it multiplies the daily change by the number of shares you have. If you bought during that day, you probably didn't buy at the opening price and the P/L shown will be wrong (both percentage and dollars).