Passive Portfolio: I'm in...sort of.

[jagger]

I'm curious which brokerage do you use, and did you pay any currency exchange fees for the US etfs?

[Argonaut]

VCE/XIU/XIC have precious metals stocks in the form of gold miners.

Precious metals stocks != Precious metals.

[fatcat]

i finally got around to looking at VCE which looks very, very good
it holds 85% of the total equity of the canadian market
and includes real estate (rio can, brookfield, h&r) and gold miners and potash
the mer is .09 !!!
i think that holding this and reinvesting dividends and adding to it is the way to go
very hard to beat

[Belguy]

"Investing in stocks over a long period of time pays off, even if you do something as simple as putting your money in an index fund. While that could prove risky from year to year, over the long term, it's a great decision. Consider this: if you invested everything in the market on the Friday before Black Monday, the big crash of October 19, 1987, you got in when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 2,500. You'd have felt like a complete fool a year later because you bought at the absolute worst time to buy. But, let's take the long-term perspective, the right one. By the summer of 1997, the Dow had leapt more than 5,000 points. That's a lot of performance to miss. And, by the summer of 2007, the Dow hit 14,000. In less than twenty years the market went up 460 per cent, and that's if you got in at the worst possible moment."

--Jim Cramer

Moral: Invest in four or five simple, lowest-fee, broadest-based index products and just hold them forever trading only periodically for rebalancing purposes and don't try to get fancy or chase after hot sectors. Over the long run, you'll achieve superior results to those of most active investors and you will spend one heck of a lot less time doing so.

The longer your investment time horizon, the less risk you will be taking. Oh, to be young again and know then what I know now!!!

[prollywrong]

I'm curious which brokerage do you use, and did you pay any currency exchange fees for the US etfs?

I'm with Questrade. No problems so far, but the account is only a month or so old. Found the chat service helpful during my first buys. No exchange fees b/c I bought in US cash, otherwise there are.