Q: I am retired but with a small consulting business that has cash sitting in an investment account. I have some concern about the valuation of the current markets and looking to invest with some tilt towards safety realizing nothing is guaranteed. I think ETFs may add a small amount of safety. With that in mind, I am looking at the following ETFs: XUT, XSU, XST, VIDY, TECH, TEC, JXI:US, FEQT with a slightly higher position in FEQT.

I would greatly appreciate your comments/thoughts and suggestions for improvements.

Thanks for this super service!

Q: I have a question about hedged/unhedged versions of the same ETFs. There are a number of these, and they often have very different market values, as in TD's Global Technology Leaders ETF - TEC (unhedged) and TECX (hedged). In this case, the unhedged version has a mere 8.7m assets compared to 3.5b for TEC.

I would normally think an ETF with such a small AUM unstable, but given this is a TD ETF and mirrors its vastly larger brother, would that necessarily be the case? And isn't the rise and fall of an ETF simply a reflection of the stocks it holds?

What brings this to mind is the way hedged ETFs of American stocks have outperformed their unhedged counterparts this year. There is an administration in the US determined to drive down the US dollar by hook or by crook. So it seems to me that hedged is the way to go for now.

Q: Greetings 5i,

Looking for diversification for the wife's portfolio. We hold within the TD platform, TD WebBroker. Specifically regarding TDs ETFs I had thought that some of their ETFs had no transaction fees associated with purchases. Usually within TD WebBroker there is a $9.99 fee for most transactions and I am trying to get around that for the ETFs we are considering. I thought 5i may have this information available and could you list the ETFs that have no transaction/trading fee through the TD WebBroker.

Cheers!