“Smart beta” has become a buzzword in investing circles, especially among pension funds and other institutional investors. The term may be new, but the idea isn’t: it’s about looking for ways to captu [...]
“Ask and ye shall receive.” That should be the refrain of Couch Potato investors during the last 10 months or so as the industry has filled just about all the gaps in the ETF marketplace. First it was [...]
Couch Potato investors try to capture the returns of entire asset classes rather selecting individual securities. And we do that with passively managed funds designed to track indexes that represent e [...]
Vanguard announced last October that it would be ending its relationship with MSCI, one of the largest index providers in the world, and using new benchmarks for many of its most popular ETFs. That tr [...]
Barry Gordon admits he was surprised when he first read Justin Bender’s entry in First Asset’s Search for Canada's Next Top ETF contest, which I introduced in my previous post. “It runs against the gr [...]
Here’s part two of my conversation with Timothy Nash, president of Strategic Sustainable Investments and the blogger behind The Sustainable Economist. (Part one is available here.) Next week I’ll go i [...]
In Monday’s post, I reviewed the major factors that contribute to an index fund’s tracking error. Here are some other things to consider when you’re comparing your fund’s performance to that of its be [...]
Last week I explained the importance of monitoring an ETF’s tracking error, which is the difference between a fund’s actual performance and the returns of its index. The most significant reason index [...]
The ideal index fund would deliver the precise return of its benchmark, but we all know that’s not realistic. ETFs and index funds may be cheap but they're not free, and fees almost always cause them [...]
In an era when ETFs are becoming increasingly narrow and specialized, the new iShares funds launched this week were a pleasant surprise. Granted, they were late to the game with the iShares S&P 50 [...]
A blog designed for Canadians who want to learn more about investing using index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.
