Burton Malkiel’s brilliant book A Random Walk Down Wall Street has, over the years, convinced legions of investors the wisdom of settling for average returns by investing passively through broad-market index funds. So, it is with some sadness that one notes that Prof. Malkiel, who is also the chief investment officer of the China-focused indexing [...]
Horizons AlphaPro recently launched four covered-call ETFs. They are: Enhanced Income Equity ETF (HEX), Enhanced Income Financials ETF (HEF), Enhanced Income Energy ETF (HEE) and Enhanced Income Gold Producers ETF (HEP). Each of these ETFs (prospectus is available here) offers investors exposure to a portfolio of stocks and generates income by generally writing at or [...]
In a recent column, Jon Chevreau reported that Vanguard Canada “will probably be selling ETFs trading on the TSX”. It is instructive to take a look at Exchange-Traded Funds Vanguard offers in Australia (thanks to reader Raman for the link) for clues into what to expect here. Vanguard’s Australian ETF line-up is refreshingly simple — [...]
The BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks ETF (ZWB) is an actively managed fund that holds Canadian bank stocks or units of the BMO S&P/TSX Equal Weight Banks Index ETF (ZEB) and writes covered call options on the underlying securities depending on market conditions. The call options written are slightly out of the money and are [...]
If there is an ‘it’ thing in investing today, it is ‘income’ products. You don’t have to look far to find the reasons. Bond yields, even adjusted for inflation, are pitifully low. Dividend yield on the overall market is still stuck at generational lows and capital gains are hard to come by. So, when BMO [...]
In his recent column in The Globe & Mail, Steadyhand mutual funds’ Tom Bradley (See Cracks Appear in the ETF Halo) highlighted a recent report by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), titled Potential financial stability issues arising from recent trends in Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). The report points out that the rapid growth in the ETF [...]
A few weeks back, Horizons BetaPro introduced a new exchange-traded fund called the US Dollar Currency ETF, ticker symbol DLR, that holds US Dollar cash and cash equivalents. In my post following its introduction, I hoped that Horizons BetaPro will introduce a US-Dollar version of the ETF because it would offer a cheap and fail-safe [...]
Horizons BetaPro has introduced a new Exchange-Traded Fund that holds US Dollar Cash and Cash Equivalents and trades on the TSX under the ticker symbol DLR. The Management Fee for the ETF is 0.45%. The ETF is priced to reflect the value in Canadian Dollars of $10 US less fees and expenses. For instance, DLR [...]
Horizons BetaPro is following up its recent launch of an ETF that tracks the TSX 60 index (see post Horizons BetaPro S&P/TSX 60 ETF (HXT): Cheap but not simple) with another product that tracks the S&P 500 (C$ hedged) Index. The ETF, ticker symbol, HXS, will employ the same total return structured swap that HXT [...]
You learn something new every day. A reader commenting on the Canadian Couch Potato blog here revealed two possible ways on avoiding currency conversion on US dollar dividends received in a self-directed RRSP account. The first of these methods works at TD Waterhouse (my review here), where the reader holds his accounts but it should [...]
