That clears things up - thank you very much! So I never really need to take MER into account when looking at the performance of a fund. I just need to take it into consideration when making a decision between two or more funds.
So it looks like the TD Canadian Equity fund has beat the TD Canadian Index fund taking MER into account. Nevertheless, that's only over a 6 year period and I'm looking at another 30.
Yes, I own all four plus the three index funds. Essentially, I had those four managed funds before adopting the couch potato strategy and have kept them in my portfolio. I adopted the couch potato strategy with new money to invest upon becoming more educated about investing. So the redundancy in my portfolio has arose as a result of adopting the couch potato strategy. To eliminate the redundancy, I would need to take your advice and switch the managed funds into funds that follow the couch potato strategy.
Even though the Canadian Equity fund has outpaced the Index fund in recent years, I'm looking at this very long term and so it may be a better approach to switch fully to Index. That way the higher cost doesn't need to be a consideration when reviewing my RRSP. More conservative, but perhaps the better way to go for the long term.
With the way things have been lately, I'm glad the majority of my holdings have been Canadian. But over the long term, it may benefit me to be better diversified geographically. I'll still go underweight in bonds for now I think.
