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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: For my fixed income side of my portfolio I've just been keeping cash in a high interest savings account (Achieva Financial in Manitoba). It pays 2.3% interest. I just checked the yield to maturity of BND the US Vanguard bond ETF and it's 2.3%. The YTM for ZAG the Canadian BMO bond ETF is 2.2%. Hardly seems worth paying an MER and risking price fluctuations. What do you think, am I missing something here?
Read Answer Asked by Andrew on October 23, 2019
Q: Last week, I asked for a few suggestions to diversify outside Canada. One of you suggestions was VXUS. I already have ZDM in my portfolio and I find that it outperformed VXUS over the past 8 years by a substantial margin (84% vs. 38%) However, ZDM has one possible major disadvantage: it is thinly traded (does that matter for a small investor?). ZDM tracks MSCI but I couldn't find the info for VXUS; their Canadian website doesn't recognize VXUX (vexatious that). Do you see any other problems and are they similar?
Read Answer Asked by Fred on October 23, 2019
Q: Hi. Given the current market and economic situation, what is your opinion of ZWC as part of an income portfolio for the next 12 months. I had thought of using both ZWC and XDV to generate some income. Thanks
Read Answer Asked by John on October 21, 2019
Q: 5i team: looking forward to the possibility that the us $ may be or approaching to be overvalued. Would at this time with new money to be deployed to a global etf such as xdg. Would 5i recommend hedged or unhedged? Also question 2 could you comment on the last year for performance of xdg verses xdgh? thanks for great service Larry
Read Answer Asked by Larry on October 21, 2019
Q: it seems to me that a good place to have bond ETF is in an RRSP. do you agree? currently I have about have of my wife's RRSP in VSC and the rest is in cash right now. i was thinking that I would place the remainder in another bond ETF with low management fee and with perhaps a more aggressive posture. Does this make sense and what other bond ETF would you recommend? thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Stuart on October 21, 2019
Q: My ETF portfolio is 30% SPY, 20% VIG, 10 IWO ( 50% USA exposure), 20 VE and 20% VEE. You seem to have switched to recommending VSP and VUN as your USA ETF. What are the advantages of VSP/VUN over SPY. VSP and SPY have similar mers, VUN is a bit higher at 0,16. I assume I started buying SPY on 5i recommendation at some point in the past... Balanced portfolio follower, nearing retirement so shifting more towards income/div aristocrats over pure growth plays.
Read Answer Asked by Tom on October 18, 2019
Q: I'm interested in India for emerging markets exposure. Would you recommend individual companies (financials?) or go with an ETF or FIH.u? Thanks for your service.
Read Answer Asked by Michael on October 16, 2019
Q: Looking to possibly switch from VEE into another Emerging Market fund. Like Mawer but Mawer 160 is quite small . Or do you other suggestions? Or stay the course with VeEE.
Read Answer Asked by Paul on October 16, 2019
Q: I'm holding about 21% cash right now and would like to invest most of it in foreign equities to diversify from my mostly Canadian portfolio. Do you have any specific ideas of what I may include, ETFs or stocks? I'm wide open for suggestions. My main objective is capital appreciation but I'm aware that good dividend payers most often do better than non-dividend payers.
Read Answer Asked by Fred on October 16, 2019
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