Mine is 0.12 also (0.1228 if you want to get specific).

My most expensive is VRE at 0.39%. I wonder why REIT funds are so pricey.

 

Good stuff Spudd ! Post your portfolio please

 

Larry

Vanguard I have heard is one of the best, the owner of the funds are the investors of the fund, Which results in the low fees. Are you able to trade them commission free in Canada ? The experts like Suzzy Orman always recommend Vangaurd

 

Some Canadian brokerage offer free trading for ETF:
http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/top-canadian-discount-brokerages-with-commission-free-etfs.htm

I am with the old green (TD) so i still pay 9.99$ per trade. I only perform about 25 buy operation a year.

 

Do you not include your transaction fees into your overall portfolio expense ratio?

All-in I'm on track for approximately 0.10% if the second 1/2 of the year mirrors the first 1/2. Granted I'm currently holding all individual stocks. I sold all my index funds in 2013.

 

Do you not include your transaction fees into your overall portfolio expense ratio?

Since my trading activity is minimal, i don't include it in my expense ratio.

 

I pay 0.05% for VTI.
I pay 0.14% for VXUS.
I pay 0.18% for XIU.

I own a bunch 30-40 individual stocks that cost about $150 per year to buy more of them during the year.

 

I'm waiting for Vangaurd's new World ex-Canada ETF to begin trading so I can consolidate my international holdings. Then I plan on:

47% World ex-Canada (MER = 0.25)
23% VCN (MER = 0.12)
30% VAB (MER = 0.20)

Weighted average = 0.205

I trust each of these will drop by a few points once Vanguard's Canadian presence picks up. VCN probably first since XIC & ZCN are now at 0.05.

 

Here's my portfolio:
CLF (laddered bond fund) - 15.5% 0.17
VAB - 4.3% 0.23
VRE 7.8% 0.39
VNQ 8.8% 0.1
XIC 13.4% 0.05
VEU 20.5% 0.15
VTI 19.8% 0.05
cash & individual stocks 10% 0

And I'm with TD too, so 9.99 per transaction. But that's hard to quantify. It's only a few trades a year so it should be low.

 

Here is what we pay on the mutual fund portion of our portfolio with TD:
TDB645 2.82
TDB976 2.82
tdb906 .51
tdb911 .51
tdb908 .51
tdb902 .35

 

Here is what we pay for our various TD e-series funds:
Fund | % of Portfolio | MER / Fee
TDB8150 (savings acct) | 31.1 | 0
TDB900 | 26.4 | 0.33
TDB902 | 26.3 | 0.35
TDB911 | 12.9 | 0.51

Avg Fee: 0.24%

Also I'm curious, has anyone found a discount broker that truly has no ETF commissions? It seems that the brokerages that offer $0 ETF commissions all have a catch. For example Questrade still charges a fee for the sale of the ETF, Qtrade requires a minimum $1000 purchase to avoid the commission, others charge an annual fee, etc.

 

protomok: getting off topic here, but I see you are holding the Fixed Income part of your portfolio as cash (HISA) and not bonds. What's your plan for when to enter the bond market with this? ie. some market-timing happening here in anticipation of an interest rate increase.

Full disclosure: I currently have my FI split ~50/50 between a short-term bond fund and HISA, although in the next few months I was planning on switching it all to an intermediate-term fund (VAB) to go along with the principle of no market timing.

 

protomok: getting off topic here, but I see you are holding the Fixed Income part of your portfolio as cash (HISA) and not bonds. What's your plan for when to enter the bond market with this? ie. some market-timing happening here in anticipation of an interest rate increase.

I'm not sure yet. I want to just put the entire FI portion in a DEX Universe bond fund and stop trying to time the market but it's hard to ignore the rate situation right now Although I like the idea of doing a 50/50 HISA / bond split.

 

5% ZRE - BMO Equal Weight REITs Index ETF (0.55% MER)

That's not the MER. It's the max management fee. I believe the MER is that plus HST which is 0.62% MER

Gotta watch out for this. Some ETF providers mention MER, others are showing the mgmt fee but not showing the MER.

 

You are right James, 0.62% !!! Thanks for the catch !

I have about 40k in this ETF (filled my TFSA), i am pondering the idea to to unbundle my holding and hold REIT individually...

I should probably update my IPS to forbid any purchase of funds with >0.50% MER.

 

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the links. I'd definitely prefer to hold individual bonds right now but unfortunately my portfolio size does not allow me to properly diversify individual bond holdings.

So I'm watching the Bond Funds and Bond ETFs, but my concern is that the Bond Funds/ETFs don't hold their bonds until maturity (with the possible exception of short term bond funds) and I see a very high probability of a loss over the next couple years once rates slowly start to rise (as indicated by the Fed).

Is there such a thing a medium term bond fund that holds all bonds until maturity? I believe such a fund would never return a loss if I understand this correctly?

Thanks

 

Is there such a thing a medium term bond fund that holds all bonds until maturity? I believe such a fund would never return a loss if I understand this correctly?

Neither do I, but because bond funds must generally purchase their bonds >$100, i.e. premium bonds, over the last 5+ years, there would be a capital loss every time a bond matures. That can be seen by comparing current yield of the bond fund with its yield to maturity. As long as the former is higher than the latter, the fund in aggregate is taking capital losses no matter when they sell their bonds.

P.S. I do not know the practices of specific bond ETFs or funds, but I understand they typically sell their bonds when maturity is less than a year away (the value of that < 1 yr bond is approaching $100 par value anyway).

 

protomok i am not aware of such fund.

It seem like you want to 'time' your entry into bonds. I dont believe this strategy will work. When you say: "once rates slowly start to rise (as indicated by the Fed)". FYI, people have been 'preparing' for rates hike since... 2010 and Anyone holding cash instead of bonds would had absorbed the opportunity cost of 3-4-5% depending of the desired fixed income.

Focus on Time in the Market, Not Market Timing

 

Thanks Larry. Yes, I am a couch potato investor getting cold feet about these bonds But I agree, market timing really has no place in a long term (>20 or 30 years), couch potato style portfolio.

So if I understand correctly, as long as I hold a bond fund for longer than the weighted average duration I will get a positive total return even if some years are negative? I plan to hold my FI portion for > 20 years...most of it is in RRSP so I think it'll be OK.

I'm going to take the plunge and pick up some XBB, or a comparable bond fund and just ignore the short term results. If I'm going to do this couch potato strategy I might as well be consistent

 

re: BMO Discount Bond Index ETF (ZDB) to avoid the "premium bonds" problem
http://www.etfs.bmo.com/bmo-etfs/glance?fundId=97632

 

Yeah, but a current yield (2.41%) and YTM (2.43%) less MER of 0.2%, and a duration of 7.06 years..... is a dismal return.

 

So, any of you cheapskate managed to achieve a <0.10% average MER ?

 

Yes, I am under that. Whatever my wife's Royal bank MER fees on ~77K plus 3-6 trades/year @ $10/trade + maybe an RRSP partial withdrawl fee of $25 should get us in the 0.09 range assuming 2% on the Royal bank stuff.

Some year I must encourage my wife to ditch the funds.

hboy43

 

0.21% for my boring portfolio.

http://canadianmoneyforum.com/showthread.php/16247-Couch-potato-lazy-portfolio-tracking-my-progress

 

Total Portfolio 0.1324%

1 XIC .05 30%
2 VTI .05 25%
3 XRE .60 5%
4 XSB .28 5%
5 DEM .63 7%
6 VWO .15 7%
7 VEA .09 7%
8 GICS 0 14%

Thanks for the thread Larry.

 

If you were truly a cheapskate, you would have a ZERO mer! Why would anyone want to buy an etf which holds 65 or 75 stocks, many of which might not be quality stocks. Even a 0.12% mer (plus mgt fee), charged every year to your account, can amount to thousands of dollars.

 

I do because I sleep well with simple diversification that still has us on track to have $megaM of invested assets in retirement without spending much time thinking about portfolio decisions. My years of stock picking proved I should spend more time running my business and living a fun life and less time trying to beat overall market performance.

 

I also went through the years of trying to out-guess the market or buying and selling to try to grow the pile. In the end I settled on the dividend growth strategy and since I've learned to concentrate on the Income my portfolio generates. It's gone up each year and now that I'm retired my dividends are double my CPP & OAS (I have no other pension). Yes my portfolio is up but I don't really care whether the value is up or down. I only watch the market to see if I can buy more of the stocks I own.

If you think the fund managers are smarter than you, than look at their top 10 holdings and select from them. You could probably ignore the other 65 holdings.

 

0.129234251459% as of today

BMO ZRE MER piss me off !

 

Self directed portfolio: 3.8% YTD 2014 (Transactional + interest )
Yeah, it's bit high but I moved from Questrade to IB and expect the expense to go down to 30% of previous level.

 

I've been unbundling REITs across my portfolio. I hope to complete the process in 2015.

 

0.20% consisting of XIC, VTI, VXUS, ZRE, XBB, and XRB.

 

Well this is a sad day...

I bough more ZRE units (According to my AA), this purchase raised my portfolio weighted average MER to 0.14% !!!

At this rate, i might as well call Investors Group right now and hand them my entire life-savings !