Investment Q&A

Q: The Canadian Dollar has weakened against the US and is reaching relatively historic lows (for the last 10 years). For Registered accounts like an RRSP and TSFA where there are no tax implications of selling, would you support the switch from Non-hedged ETFs to CAD-Hedged ETFs? For example, the switch from XUU.CA to XUH.CA

Q: Hi 5i
Hope you can help me. I've managed my and my wife's registered and unregistered accounts for a number of years and I'm satisfied with the results. Those accounts primarily hold equities and I spend quite a bit of time overseeing them and tweaking as I think necessary.
I've now been put in the position of acting as trustee of funds for two minors. The time frames the two trusts will run are 7 and 9 years respectively and the principal amount of each is approx 75K. I want to invest the funds but I don't want to put them in individual equities and manage them as actively as I do our personal accounts. I would prefer to put them into ETF's that I can keep an eye on monthly or quarterly and not worry too much about tweaking.
Being optimistic by nature I'm hoping to arrange to get it all for these two trusts - capital appreciation, income, sensible degree of risk, Canadian, US and international exposure, favourable tax treatment, etc.
There are an awful lot of ETF's out there and I really don't know how best to evaluate them to shake out a reasonable number to look into further - especially considering how difficult it can be to identify individual holdings to effectively avoid overlap and provide diversification.
With all that in mind, could I ask you to list 5 (or so) equity based ETF's for each of CDA, the US and internationally that you think might accomplish the goals I've listed, so that I can then look into those ones further and make some decisions about where to put these funds I'm charged with managing.
Also, if you do have any general or specific advice that you think might be useful to me in the situation I've described, I would certainly appreciate your including it in your answer.
Thanks very much and please deduct credits as you feel appropriate.
Peter