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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: If I wanted to add a single ETF for each of the following what would be your suggested ETF: S&P 500, TSX 60 and Dow 30?

Thanks and Merry Christmas!
Read Answer Asked by Ronald on December 28, 2020
Q: Can you please recommend a couple of ETFs for an RESP with a six year time frame? Thank you!
Read Answer Asked by Susan on December 28, 2020
Q: I am helping my niece set up with ETF. She is holding the below funds right now. Can you please advise their fees and which ETF would you suggest replacing them with? Is there a site where you can check the mutual fund fees and performance?

PH&N LifeTime 2045 Fund
RBC Canadian Equity Fund
RBC Balanced Fund
BLK Balanced Index
Capital Global Equity
BLK US Equity Index

Thanks for your help
Hector
Read Answer Asked by Hector on November 12, 2020
Q: Which is better for an RESP in terms of growth and returns within the next 2-3 years? Perhaps a ranking?
Read Answer Asked by Maureen on October 08, 2020
Q: Which one of these would be the best choice for a RESP. Beneficiary is an older child (grandson) who will start to draw funds from mid 2021 onwards. Looking for the best return within the 2 to 5 years remaining before total drawdown of funds would be completed.

I plan to establish a new RESP for a great granddaughter soon. She is not yet 2 years so has a long time horizon. Any suggestions?
Read Answer Asked by Maureen on October 08, 2020
Q: Good day
If I wanted to purchase ETFs instead of Mawer funds what would be the equivalent ETFs in Canada or the US
Thanks
Read Answer Asked by Indra on October 01, 2020
Q: I am trying to find the average returns of the TSX, and the TSX 60 (XIU?), for the last 5, 10 and 20 years - including and excluding dividends. Am I right to use the XIU for the TSX 60, or is there something better? Could you please complete the missing 'including dividend' and let me know where I could find that in the future? Thank you very much.
TSX:
5 year: 5.21% (excluding dividends). 5 year: _____ (including dividends??)
10 year: 4.4% (excluding div.). 10 year: _____ (including div.?)
20 year: 6.1% (excluding div.) 20 year: _____ (including div.?)

TSX60 (XIU ETF):
5 year: 0.094% (excluding div.) 5 year: _____ (including dividends??)
10 year: 4.54% (excluding div.) 10 year: _____ (including div.?)
20 year: 2.38% (excluding div.) 20 year: _____ (including div.?)
Read Answer Asked by Toge on August 28, 2020
Q: My son has asked my advice on how best to invest ~$13K he holds in GICs in registered accounts. He has a very young family and wants to begin investing on the right foot with this initial investment while adding to it over time, funds permitting. My personal investing approach has been to invest in high quality, primarily Canadian, dividend paying equities but for him, just starting out and with many investing years ahead of him, EFTs seem a far more appropriate and safer choice.

Would you consider 60% CDZ and 40% ZDY a good suggestion for him or would you recommend other EFTs that better track the indexes like XIU and ZSP? Do you consider just two EFTs sufficient diversification until his portfolio grows larger? What about the percentage Canada/U.S. split? Does 60/40 seem OK? Many thanks for your thoughts on the matter.
Read Answer Asked by Bruce on June 16, 2020
Q: Hello 5i,
I'm considering swapping xiu for xqq inside my RRSP, would you consider at this time a good move, pros/cons I need to be aware of?
Thanks
f
Read Answer Asked by Fernando on June 10, 2020
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
Read Answer Asked by Peter on June 05, 2020
Q: I currently own XWD in my RRSP, is this a good ETF or is there a better ETF that is similar to XWD that would be better?
Thanks
Read Answer Asked on May 26, 2020
Q: 5i Hello,
I have these EFTs on my RRSP and not feeling happy with them, can you suggest some possible candidates I could switch to, or just sell them all and with profits buy CSU LSPD SHOP GOOG AMZN.
Thank
F
Read Answer Asked by Fernando on May 21, 2020
Q: We have an unregistered account with 74% cash and want to buy some index funds (my wife read Millionaire Teacher and is convinced index funds eliminate some human error with stock selection). We are considering XIU, ZSP and perhaps ZDB; we do have a significant bond holding with Phillips, Hager & North and not sure if bonds should be part of this unregister account? Long term investments 7+ years. Thanks you very much for your comments on index funds.
Read Answer Asked by Grant on March 31, 2020
Q: Hello, Please provide ETF's that replicates TSX, S&P, DOW & NASDAQ
are there Hedged and non-hedged versions for US stock Indices.
Thanks.
Read Answer Asked by Harpinder on March 10, 2020
Q: Hey Guys,

What are we to make of the constant negative headlines on some websites (zerohedge in particular) that talk about a recession coming this year?

I have been hearing in the headlines for years that there will be a recession...but it hasn’t happened yet.

I just don’t want to invest right before a major downturn like in 2008.....

What to do?

Thank-you.

Dave
Read Answer Asked by David M. on January 07, 2020
Q: It has been suggested to me that over the long term, the the average investor like myself is better off buying the indexes VFV with a dividend of 1.64% and XIU with a dividend of 3.61% rather than buying a portfolio of individual stocks. Would appreciate 5I's observation of this comment. Thanks, Bill
Read Answer Asked by William J on October 29, 2019