The recently released first Quarterly ETF Asset Flow Report (not available online) by the Canadian ETF Association (CETFA) shows some interesting trends. The industry is growing strongly with total net sales across all ETF providers of $2.77 billion. The number of ETFs is also exploding: 18 new ones were introduced during the last quarter alone [...]
Scotia iTrade’s recently announced that its clients can buy or sell 46 ETFs without a commission. Most of the ETFs in the list are Claymore ETFs and I gave some thought to how an investor would go about building a diversified portfolio out of the names in the list. The rules for building the portfolio [...]
Canadian Couch Potato broke the news last week that Scotia iTrade became the first discount broker in Canada to offer commission-free trading on some exchange-traded funds. Out of the 200 or so ETFs available on the TSX, Scotia iTrade will not charge commissions on forty-six ETFs: 31 from Claymore, 8 from iShares and 7 from [...]
Yesterday, Vanguard Canada filed preliminary prospectus for six Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). You can view the preliminary long form prospectus here. The ETFs will cover Canadian bonds, Canadian equities and International equities asset classes. The management fees and the ticker symbols for the ETFs are not known at this point. Canadian Bonds Vanguard Canadian Aggregate Bond [...]
RBC has filed preliminary prospectus (available on SEDAR here) to introduce eight new ETFs. All of RBC’s ETFs will be Corporate Bond ETFs with target dates ranging from 2013 to 2020. For instance, the RBC Target 2020 Corporate Bond ETF will replicate the performance of a portfolio of Canadian dollar-denominated investment grade corporate bonds that [...]
As if we did not have enough exchange-traded funds already, PowerShares recently added six more to the growing tally. They are: PowerShares 1-5 Year Laddered Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (TSX: PSB) tracks the performance of a bond ladder comprised of Canadian investment-grade corporate bonds maturing in one to five years. The management fee is [...]
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 [...]
