Q: I am reviewing my portfolio and realized that XEI has grown to be about 20% of my annual income earned from my investments. If it was an individual stock I would be concerned and divest some of it. As an ETF should I still be concerned? I am retired and have no work pension.
5i Research Answer:
We are far more comfortable in having ETFs at higher weightings, but each one does need to be examined. For large positions we would certainly avoid small funds run by small management companies. Emerge Funds recently experienced issues and those funds remain tied up right now. But XEI is $1.4B in assets, and run by Blackrock, one of the world's largest managers. It also owns 76 individual securities, so diversification is very high. We would have few concerns on position size, but in general terms we prefer not to go too much above 20% with any one fund.