# Have You Joined the Rush to ETF's?



## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

ETF's continue to grow in popularity even as index and managed mutual funds continue to lose ground:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...funds-propels-vanguard-to-top/article1733578/


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

If you ask me, over time the dividing line between mutual funds and ETFs will get blurry.
ETF MERs are increasing...esp. for the exotic ETFs.
In the last 3 years, the number, type and complexity of ETFs has increased 20x, leaving ordinary investors more confused than ever.
Also, the exotic and complex ETFs kinda defeat the purpose of passive and agnostic investing.
If you are cherry picking based on sectors, countries, geographies, size of companies, dividend vs. non-dividend, and a host of other parameters, you are already implicitly betting on certain factors, isn't it.
The couch potato type strategy is still the best use of ETFs/index funds, IMHO.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Interesting. These low-cost ETFs are great. I love them. I also have an index fund at my bank with an MER of around 0.65% which is quite reasonable.

People are getting wise to the banks and their sky-high MER's.

But I don't think things will stay the same. Once the masses have flocked to the ETFs, they'll raise the MERs. Just you watch.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> Once the masses have flocked to the ETFs, they'll raise the MERs. Just you watch.


I think there will always be low cost ETF alternatives.It might require a trade or two but ETF investors will follow the money...


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Rare indeed is the ETF with fees over 1%, almost as rare as the MF with fees under 1%.


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## warp (Sep 4, 2010)

Well said, HAROLDCRUMP


Buying a pile of ETF's really defeats the purpose of having ETF's in the first place. You are cherry picking ETF's...which is no dufferent than cherry picking individual stocks.

ETF's are now getting more and more specific....which also defeats the purpose.

The more exotic, specific, and narrow the ETF, the higher the MER.

Read John Boogles book,( the Father of ETF or index investing),,its called 
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing.


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

Just don't buy the latest exotic, specialty ETF's from the creative whiz kids in the financial services industry.

Stick with the broad-based, heavily traded ETF's with the lowest fees.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

Have never owned an ETF and have no plans to buy one.


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

mogul777 said:


> Have never owned an ETF and have no plans to buy one.


Me either.

I like my Mutual Funds regardless of the higher MER's.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Kae, why do you like your MF vs. what ETFs have to offer? What makes them better in your view?


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## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

I stick with no-load MFs because I invest by making relatively small monthly contributions. The trading fees make this impossible with ETFs, I'd pay more in fees than I would earn in interest. Maybe once I have about 30k to invest I will buy some ETFs.


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## warp (Sep 4, 2010)

I'd say thats the correct strategy.

I would advise that you stick to low cost, low MER , index funds where you can. Any fees you save will only add to your bottom line.

I'm not at TD , but know that their E-series funds might be a good choice.

Good luck


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

In some categories, including small caps and emerging markets and perhaps some others, I still believe that active management can be a justifiable choice in adding enough value to justify the added costs.

Am I out of line with that type of thinking??


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> Kae, why do you like your MF vs. what ETFs have to offer? What makes them better in your view?


I don't think my MF's are necessarily "better" than ETF's, because of course that statement would depend on too many factors. However, for me, personally, MF's are better because I am able to invest smaller amounts more frequently and therefore get better dollar cost averaging. ETF's are usually only good for lump sums due to the trading fees. My MF's have outperformed the market more times than they haven't, so it makes up for the higher MER's. 

That being said, ETF's just don't attract me. If I stumbled across $10k, that would be a different story!


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Sherlock said:


> I stick with no-load MFs because I invest by making relatively small monthly contributions. The trading fees make this impossible with ETFs, I'd pay more in fees than I would earn in interest. Maybe once I have about 30k to invest I will buy some ETFs.


Sorry, I did not see this earlier. Royal, this is exactly my line of thinking.


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Belguy said:


> In some categories, including small caps and emerging markets and perhaps some others, I still believe that active management can be a justifiable choice in adding enough value to justify the added costs.
> 
> Am I out of line with that type of thinking??


Nope.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Got it - makes sense. Thanks for explaining.

Yeah I understand dollar cost average. But for me, that isn't as attractive because I'm one of those lump-sum investors. I have never invested less than $2K in one shot and my investments are usually in once-annually chunks like that. Basically I save all year, if everything goes well and there are no dark clouds on the horizon, THEN I invest the money. I don't like giving access to by bank account to do monthly debits. Monthly payments are evil. I will give them the money, they will not take it.

I don't expect anyone to agree, it's just how I do things. Thanks again for explaining.


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## mork (Apr 3, 2009)

I don't currently own any ETFs, but I am considering setting up a coach potato portfolio based on them.

The more I read on the mechanics of ETFs, the more confused I get.. and that confusion leads to concerns. MFs have an inherent comfort about them for me - knowing that the MF shares are backed by owned stocks. There's some paranoia out there suggesting the whole house of cards could come crumbling down.. and perhaps I am buying in to that paranoia.

I think my main problem is that I don't yet understand ETFs and how they work and what the real risk actually is. When I don't understand something, I feal uneasy giving it my money.

is anyone else on the fence a bit about these or am I reading too many articles written by naysayers?

All of that said, they seem to be a great deal on the surface!


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Conventional equity ETFs are backed by stocks in the same way that MFs are. Better, in fact. If you have enough units of the ETF, you can redeem them for the underlying shares in all the companies the ETF holds. This is how the prices of ETFs are helped to track the index--market makers/arbitrageurs create and destroy units whenever the value of the ETF deviates too much from NAV. 


I'm curious what the critics are saying. My guess is that there are down on the more exotic ETFs, such as leveraged or inverse indices, or most of the commodity ETFs, which is probably fair. Some of these are questionable investments, and not for novice investors.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

mork said:


> is anyone else on the fence a bit about these or am I reading too many articles written by naysayers?
> 
> All of that said, they seem to be a great deal on the surface!


If you're doing a couch potato thing, just stick to basic ETF's that track us/cdn/europe/emerge market indexes, you'll be fine.


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

> I stick with no-load MFs because I invest by making relatively small monthly contributions. The trading fees make this impossible with ETFs, I'd pay more in fees than I would earn in interest. Maybe once I have about 30k to invest I will buy some ETFs.


 claymore which is a very good etf company has something called a pacc plan, once you buy at least 1 share of an etf you can fill out a pacc form and then buy monthly or quarterly and so on for no commision


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

From my personal research into, and knowledge of, ETF's, I prefer the broad-based, index based, original ETF's such as those sold by iShares.

The jury is still out on how well fundamental ETF's, such as those offered by Claymore, will perform by comparison over the long run. For now, I might suggest Claymore for their low fee bond ETF's but the broad-based iShares or Vanguard ETF's for your core equity holdings.

I can forego the bells and whistles in the interest of low fees and simplicity.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

fatcat said:


> claymore which is a very good etf company has something called a pacc plan, once you buy at least 1 share of an etf you can fill out a pacc form and then buy monthly or quarterly and so on for no commision


Don't forget about volume. No point owning an ETF you can't trade. If you want to buy and hold you should be buying dividend stocks not funds.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Liquidity isn't that big of an issue for ETFs. They can't deviate too far from NAV without creating arbitrage opportunities.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> Liquidity isn't that big of an issue for ETFs. They can't deviate too far from NAV without creating arbitrage opportunities.


Liquidity is an issue for anything that needs to be bought and sold. Big words don't make an idiot intelligent.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

This topic was discussed by Larry Berman today on BNN.

It appears that ETFs are more of an exotic creation that many would think.

He was discussing a white paper that was produced by Bogan Associates examining some underlying facts on ETFs that many people don't realize. The popularity of ETFs could well be explained by the interest of large hedge funds in using them to hedge whole sectors to protect other investments.

There is also the issue of "creating shares" from thin air, which doesn't sit well with me. The example used was an ETF that had 17 Million shares outstanding, but had 95 Million shares shorted...............so what happens if there is a run on the ETF? Do they honour the first 17 Million shares only? 

Here is the link to the white paper:

http://boganassociates.com/whitepapers.html

and the link to Larry Berman's response:

http://www.bnn.ca/Blogs/2010/10/04/Can-ETFs-collapse-No.aspx

According to Mr. Berman, the funds would not collapse because they have safeguards against it. I have a little trouble with the explanation though. What is to stop hedge funds from gradually redeeming their shares (even if they couldn't redeem them all) and leaving other investors sitting with worthless shares? This particular ETF went from 17 million shares outstanding to 5 million because of redemptions. There were still 80 million shorted shares in the market. So if another 5 million shares were redeemed, what would happen? Mr. Berman argues that it can't happen, but it looks like it almost did.

I don't think it is clear what would happen if all the outstanding shares in an ETF were redeemed.

Leave it to the financiers to complicate a simple investing method.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

mogul777 said:


> Liquidity is an issue for anything that needs to be bought and sold. Big words don't make an idiot intelligent.


What about things that can be bought, sold, created and redeemed?

More to the point, please show me an ETF that has (or had) liquidity issues that were not caused by illiquidity in the underlying.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

sags said:


> This topic was discussed by Larry Berman today on BNN.
> 
> It appears that ETFs are more of an exotic creation that many would think.
> 
> ...


The shares of the ETF can only become worthless when the underlying holdings become worthless. Because anyone can simply buy enough shares of the ETF to redeem them for the underlying. If the price of the ETF drops too far below the NAV, an enterprising authorized market participant will buy 10,000 or 50,000 etc shares of the ETF, bring them to the ETF provider and trade them for the underlying securities and sell them, making a cool profit.

If there are more shorts than outstanding shares, then when those shorts attempt to cover, they need to buy shares. This drives the price above NAV, and will trigger the creation of new units of the ETF. In order to create those units, an authorized participant buys all the underlying securities and trades them in.

These things can only deviate so far from NAV. So what matters is how liquid the underlying securities are, not how liquid the ETF is. An ETF with a $10 million float is generally far more liquid than any individual stock with same.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

sags said:


> There is also the issue of "creating shares" from thin air, which doesn't sit well with me. The example used was an ETF that had 17 Million shares outstanding, but had 95 Million shares shorted...............


Isn't that naked shorting?
I know hedge funds routinely indulge in it, but this is rather an extreme example.
Also, I thought regulators in most countries are cracking down on this practice in a big way.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

They can create new ETF units to cover the shorts. And it's not 'out of thin air'.


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

Sometimes I am happy that I am not a sophisticated investor.

It gives me a lot less things to worry about and allows me to live in ignorant bliss invested as I am mainly in broad-based ETF's.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

what the bogan article is describing is not naked shorting, but rather a pale, stunted relative. Perhaps not as toxic and certainly not a sibling, but they're both from the same family. It's the same dna.

as we've seen especially since 2007, flash panic meltdowns can occur in hours. Who's to say that ETF authorized participants will be able to create new shares, or will so create even if they are able.

i for one think it's premature to either whitewash or blackball ETFs and their prime broker APs. I look forward to a lot more discussion. More information needs to be aired out, imo. It's even theoretically possible that this critical onslaught against ETFs is somehow being backed by the traditional mutual fund industry, with its time-honoured and conventional inventories of exchange-tradeable stocks & bonds.

it's not premature, though, to recognize that regulators cannot control or even anticipate all disasters. A recent dry-as-dust article in the globe & mail discusses the fact that the regulators themselves often do not understand synthetic funds & synthetic etfs. And an etf which is short the vast majority of its shares and has nothing more to cover with than a bunch of non-tradeable IOUs from prime brokers & hedge funds promising to create more units is indeed dealing in synthetics of a sort.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...rules-not-enough-experts-warn/article1712767/

the article quotes Wharton school senior fellow joe mason:

_“At the end of the day, crises happen because of new stuff that we don’t understand,” Mr. Mason said. He thinks regulators should be able to stanch product development so that new, complex securities are never worth more than say 5 per cent of a commercial bank’s balance sheet.

But would that slow economic growth? Quite the contrary, Mr. Mason argued. A rule like this “forces banks to appeal to the regulators to help them understand [their products],” he said._

in same article, analyst Christopher Whalen says that _" ... the financial crisis amplified because leading financial institutions did not know what complex securities they owned ... and those that did know had no market to trade them on."_


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

The ability of APs to make new units of ETFs is constrained by the liquidity of the underlying securities. We saw that with the flash crash this spring. Provided the APs can get their hands on the underlying securities, they won't hesitate to take advantage of a sufficient arbitrage opportunity.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

mogul777 said:


> Have never owned an ETF and have no plans to buy one.


Same.


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## davext (Apr 11, 2010)

I'm a lump sum investor as well. I prefer ETFs because I honestly believe that the financial institutions are only looking out for themselves and mutual funds are just another way to generate revenue. 

As there are more and more CDN ETF providers, the fees should go down as well. We already see the fierce competition in the States.


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## Jayde (Oct 4, 2010)

I avoid mutual funds, but I do make use of ETF's. However, I'm a trader, not an investor. I actively buy and sell ETF's rather than holding them for long term growth.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

Belguy said:


> Sometimes I am happy that I am not a sophisticated investor.
> 
> It gives me a lot less things to worry about and allows me to live in ignorant bliss invested as I am mainly in broad-based ETF's.


Or you can just pretend to be one in an attempt to seem important while still living in bliss. Or better yet skip all the fancy talk fakery and stick to the basics... it's really not that hard... for most of us.  

Belguy you've got the right investing attitude. Enjoy the finer things in life.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

davext said:


> I'm a lump sum investor as well. I prefer ETFs because I honestly believe that the financial institutions are only looking out for themselves and mutual funds are just another way to generate revenue.
> 
> As there are more and more CDN ETF providers, the fees should go down as well. We already see the fierce competition in the States.


As they are in business to make money virtually all products, including ETFs, are "just another way to generate revenue".


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> What about things that can be bought, sold, created and redeemed?


Invented, dis-invented, reinvented, and lost in oblivion. Your desire to make the basics complicated both concerns and amuses me. 



> More to the point, please show me an ETF that has (or had) liquidity issues that were not caused by illiquidity in the underlying.


Why?


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

Humble, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but as with anything there is likely some fraction of invented backlash against ETFs from the more traditional fund industry. However, there is enough overlap in the financial industry to refute this as the main cause. 

There are some articles that venture into the darkside of ETFs. Perhaps dear andrew will stumble onto a couple of links while he's off pondering why? LOL.

Knowing your products, your customers, and your limitations is hardly detrimental to economic growth. Now if it takes ignorant regulators to be the brakes on convoluted financial schemes then so be it.

ETFs are simply another investment vehicle invented by the financial industry and as such they should be viewed in the same light. Not better, not worse, just different... but not much.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

But they *are* better. MERs of consistently less than 1% definitely puts them in the better category in my eyes. One of the MF's I had, had an MER of 2.65%!


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

mogul777 said:


> Invented, dis-invented, reinvented, and lost in oblivion. Your desire to make the basics complicated both concerns and amuses me.


If you don't think the difference is important, think about the difference between open ended funds like MFs and ETFs and closed ended funds. The latter tend to have large deviations from NAV, while the former do not.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

the-royal-mail said:


> But they *are* better. MERs of consistently less than 1% definitely puts them in the better category in my eyes. One of the MF's I had, had an MER of 2.65%!


So did it earn that MER? If it did then so what. Taking numbers out of context is meaningless. There's andrew style overthink and then there's failure to comprehend underthink. lol. And yes blah blah blah better odds of better performance with lower fees... certainly helps on bond and money market funds.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> If you don't think the difference is important, think about the difference between open ended funds like MFs and ETFs and closed ended funds. The latter tend to have large deviations from NAV, while the former do not.


I'm thinking so what, but remind me again what we're talking about.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Hey, if want to pay fees, I wouldn't be opposed a few bps tossed my way. 

I'll agree that it all comes down to your faith that active management can overcome the difference in fees. Matching isn't good enough--active MFs have to beat their index by a far bit more than the excess fees on average to compensate you for the risk that they don't earn their fee. I don't think that's likely, but to each their own. There is the odd hedge fund manage that has been able to produce impressive returns on 10 or 15 year time frames, but past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

mogul777 said:


> I'm thinking so what, but remind me again what we're talking about.


The difference is that MFs/ETFs can create/redeem units, while closed end funds cannot. So, you can't talk about the liquidity of open ended funds in the same way you talk about the liquidity of individual equities, where penny stocks and microcaps are hard to enter and exit. An ETF with a $5 million float is likely way more liquid than a stock with $50 million float. Companies can't generally quickly create and destroy shares in response to deviations from their estimation of their fundamental value.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> The difference is that MFs/ETFs can create/redeem units, while closed end funds cannot. So, you can't talk about the liquidity of open ended funds in the same way you talk about the liquidity of individual equities, where penny stocks and microcaps are hard to enter and exit. An ETF with a $5 million float is likely way more liquid than a stock with $50 million float. Companies can't generally quickly create and destroy shares in response to deviations from their estimation of their fundamental value.


Okay. Now can you relate this to my earlier post to make it relevant?


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> Hey, if want to pay fees, I wouldn't be opposed a few bps tossed my way.
> 
> I'll agree that it all comes down to your faith that active management can overcome the difference in fees. Matching isn't good enough--active MFs have to beat their index by a far bit more than the excess fees on average to compensate you for the risk that they don't earn their fee. I don't think that's likely, but to each their own. There is the odd hedge fund manage that has been able to produce impressive returns on 10 or 15 year time frames, but past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.


Past fund performance is not, but past manager performance actually is... yeah you'll have to search that out for yourself I don't do homework anymore. 

Of course lower fees are always better, but basing investment decisions on fees alone is well let's say not sophisticated investing. Heck one doesn't even have to know what arbitrage and AP mean to do it, lol. Useful knowledge vs useless knowledge.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Agreed. If fees were the only consideration, I'd own stocks directly.

My perspective on active managers is that the ones worth their salt are probably running hedge funds, and I am not an accredited investor. 

Of course, if you like a particular manager or managers, but want his advice without his fees, check out AlphaClone.

And knowing how ETFs work is not what I would call useless knowledge, particularly in the context of a thread about how ETFs work.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> And knowing how ETFs work is not what I would call useless knowledge, particularly in the context of a thread about how ETFs work.


Agreed. Problem is your spending all your time loading the cart and forgetting about the horse.  Also, you neglected to make your other post relevant to the original discussion. Irrelevance while occasionally interesting is still useless.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

mogul777 said:


> Don't forget about volume. No point owning an ETF you can't trade.


This is why I brought it up.


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## mogul777 (Jun 2, 2009)

andrewf said:


> This is why I brought it up.


No kidding. But you still haven't explained how your replies are relevant. Perhaps this is too difficult? 

PS: Try and refrain from your typical unearned arrogance in assuming indifference equals ignorance.


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

etf's are good way to own a basket of stocks for a fairly low fee

you can often save money over buying individual stocks
even if you are a buy and hold investor (not to mention the time and work involved in setting up drips)

plus you do have any easy option to quickly trade if you need

i think etf's will continue to put pressure on mf fees as part of an overall trend of lowering costs of investing in general

this is a really interesting calculator to help determine whether the cost of an etf vs owning individual stocks is worthwhile

Canadian ETF Fee Calculator

he references xiu which is a bargain etf by any measure at only .17 mer


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

I don't see much evidence that fees for 'professionally' managed mutual funds are dropping in any significant way in Canada so far at least.

There must still be a lot of investors out there with money to burn and with no concern about the significant impact of these fees over the long term.

I guess that those investors figure that, what the heck, it's only money!!


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Belguy said:


> I don't see much evidence that fees for 'professionally' managed mutual funds are dropping in any significant way in Canada so far at least.
> 
> There must still be a lot of investors out there with money to burn and with no concern about the significant impact of these fees over the long term.
> 
> I guess that those investors figure that, what the heck, it's only money!!


Not everyone is as lucky as the royal mail to have found CMF and had MG evaluate their funds and point out the high fees they are paying.  And then to have other forumers point out better-performing funds with lower fees.


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Belguy said:


> I don't see much evidence that fees for 'professionally' managed mutual funds are dropping in any significant way in Canada so far at least.
> 
> *There must still be a lot of investors out there with money to burn and with no concern about the significant impact of these fees over the long term*.
> 
> I guess that those investors figure that, what the heck, it's only money!!


There are a lot (probably 90%) of funds that, yes, take a lot of money in fees that don't make up for their gains.

But remember, there are _some_ funds that will smoke your ETFs. And once again, its about dollar cost averaging... Something that can't easily be done when purchasing ETF's. While you're sitting there waiting for $5,000 or $10,000 to accumulate in your savings before buying your ETF in order to "save" on trading costs, you could have effectively LOST a ton of capital gains that COULD have been made, had your money been in the fund sooner. MF's cost more in the fact that they are guaranteed in the money you will spend on them for fees on an annual basis. ETF's... are cheeky buggers. They can hurt more than mutual funds and cause indirect loss, or unnecessary trading costs.

There are some advantages to funds vs ETF's I think a lot of people overlook, just because the MER's are high.


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## Financial Cents (Jul 22, 2010)

Totally agree with another post.

"ETFs are simply another investment vehicle invented by the financial industry and as such they should be viewed in the same light."

Buy what you need and feel comfortable with.

For me, these products work. Low fees, I understand them, dividends are steady, high transparency. Don't change (from mutual funds) just for the sake of changing. Do your own homework. Nobody cares more about your money than you do.


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## mork (Apr 3, 2009)

*Can ETFs collapse? - No!*

http://www.bnn.ca/Blogs/2010/10/04/Can-ETFs-collapse-No.aspx

6 minute video and short blog entry from Larry Berman.


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

Dollar cost average into an index fund and then, periodically transfer the funds out of the index fund and into a broad-based, lower fee ETF.

There is still few good reasons to pay the high fees for a managed fund. 

That said, I have been happy to pay the 2.04 MER for my holdings in the RBC Global Precious Metals Fund for which I have been rewarded with a 5 year annualized return of 26.8% and a 10 year annualized return of 29.6%!!

There are exceptions to every rule!!!

All of the 25 top performing funds, in all categories, over the past five years are either in the Precious Metals or Natural Resources sector according to today's Toronto Star.

That said, history does not always predict the future. However, I do feel that these two sectors will continue to do well and warrant an allocation of 5 to 10 percent each in a diversified portfolio.

A top performing natural resources fund has been the Dynamic Focus+ Resource Fund with a MER of 2.66% and a five year annualized return of 21.4% and ten year annualized return of 21.4% and a Morningstar 5 star rating.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

>RBC Global Precious Metals Fund

Thanks for the tip!

I'm also looking at their CDN Index bond fund (0.65 MER) in the coming months.


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## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

I prefer the PH&N Bond Fund Series D to the RBC Canadian Bond Index Fund.

https://www.phn.com/Default.aspx?tabid=524

Advisors cannot sell this fund.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Belguy said:


> That said, I have been happy to pay the 2.04 MER for my holdings in the RBC Global Precious Metals Fund for which I have been rewarded with a 5 year annualized return of 26.8% and a 10 year annualized return of 29.6%!! ...


What has your return been since you bought it (after MER)?


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## furgy (Apr 20, 2009)

Have You Joined the Rush to ETF's?

Not really.

I did get into XRE , but sold it at a small profit and put the money back into my small cap REITs where I can get over twice the distributions of XRE.


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