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That's true, good point!You're right, they are similar. I think this is because both exclude commodities and resources so both are essentially holding the TSX, underweight commodity stocks. In other words, they have similar sector exposures. Both are very light on tech.
I have considered buying ZLB instead of my individual 5 stocks and I think one could make that substitution. ZLB is better diversified, which is a plus.
In my non registered account, I prefer to hold these individual stocks. I prefer the tax accounting with the individual stocks, since I don't have to deal with the ETF distribution mess. I really prefer keeping Canadian ETFs inside registered accounts only.
But there's also a hefty 0.39% fee on ZLB. For my 100K invested, assuming I make just 5 rebalancing trades a year @ $10 each, my "MER" works out to just 0.05% which is a fraction of the cost of ZLB.
Anyone knows how that MER truely affects the returns? Say I buy an 100$ of an ETF with 1% MER and 10% CAGR. Let's say everything is applied only once per year. At the end of the year, will I get +10$ from CAGR and -1$ from MER or will I get +10$ from CAGR and -1.1$ from MER (because my investment now worth 110$). In the first case, it means MER can be substracted from CAGR. In the second case, it means MER must be compounded over the CAGR. I've read places saying your total return is CAGR - MER, but I'm wondering if it's just simplifying the truth...