Recently, BlackRock which offers 48 ETFs in Canada under the iShares label announced that it will be acquiring Claymore Canada, a vendor of 34 exchange-traded funds. The press release accompanying the announcement said that the transaction enhances BlackRock’s ability to “deliver excellence in innovation, quality and choice”. According to the Canadian ETF Association, iShares is [...]
[Note: This post was originally published on January 6, 2010. I've updated it with the data for the past two years on the performance of the iShares MSCI EAFE CAD-Hedged Index Fund (TSX: XIN) relative to MSCI EAFE local currency returns. Bottom line: Though the performance lag of the past two years was slight, the [...]
[The top bid in the Bloggers for Charity initiative is $400 by Straight Talk Investing's Dr. Dale Rathgeber. The deadline for sending in your bids is tomorrow, so if you want to outbid Dr. Dale, you may want to hurry and contact me directly.] iShares recently introduced a Floating Rate Note ETF (Factsheet, Prospectus) that [...]
[A quick update on where the bidding stands in the Bloggers for Charity auction. The top bid so far is $288.88 by The Cynical Investor. If you'd like to make a bid, you may want to hurry. Bidding will close on December 16, 2011.] Vanguard’s initial line up of six exchange-traded funds (ETFs) started trading [...]
In a recent post, Thicken My Wallet argued that even though some ETFs may be cheaper, they are thinly traded which means that investors are taking on liquidity risk — the risk that a security cannot be quickly converted to cash. Here are the trading volumes of the Canadian dividend ETFs that were examined in [...]
Last week, Vanguard Canada announced the management fees and ticker symbols for its initial line-up of six Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). Staying true to its low-cost philosophy, Vanguard priced the ETFs cheaper than existing comparable products. While I’m very excited about the lower fees charged by Vanguard ETFs I think that any decision to switch out [...]
A few months back Vanguard announced that it will be setting shop in Canada by launching six new ETFs. Today, Vanguard provided more details on the new ETFs (the final prospectus is also now available on SEDAR here) that will soon start trading on the TSX: 1. The Vanguard MSCI Canada Index ETF, which tracks [...]
If you are interested in an ETF that holds dividend-paying stocks, you might be interested in the news that the BMO Canadian Dividend ETF (TSX: ZDV) started trading just recently. The ETF holds 50 stocks that are selected based on dividend growth, dividend yield, payout ratio and liquidity and weighted by yield. The portfolio is [...]
Claymore’s #1 and #2 ETFs by assets under management are the Claymore 1-5 Year Laddered Corporate Bond ETF (TSX: CBO) and the Claymore 1-5 Year Laddered Government Bond ETF (TSX: CLF). So, it’s not very surprising that Claymore’s two newest ETFs are similar products moving up the yield curve. The Claymore 1-10 Year Laddered Government [...]
Dennis Gartman is a frequent fixture in the media circuit (some examples here, here and here) and his Gartman letter is apparently widely read and often quoted in the press. For instance, the Financial Post ran a story today that Gartman is warning “very real damage” to the gold market. It’s all fascinating stuff but [...]
