First, a warm welcome to all new subscribers! In January, I sent out an email with my top picks for 2019: the Vanguard "balanced" ETFs mentioned on pages 176-177 of Beat the Bank. If a balanced ETF matches your desired stock/bond split (discussed in Chapter 9), you could buy it now and keep adding to it over time. For instance, if your desired stock/bond split is 60/40, you could buy VBAL. No investment is perfect and every investment has risk but if you want a low cost, automatically balanced, globally diversified investment portfolio with one holding, these types of ETFs are hard to beat! Now for the update...... Vanguard has introduced 2 new balanced ETFs to fill out their offering while iShares and BMO have introduced their own versions of balanced ETFs. More great choices for "Assemble It Yourself" investors! Here is a list of balanced ETFs now available to Canadians: Symbol | Stocks | Bonds | Fees | | | | (approx) | | | | | Vanguard | | | | VCIP | 20% | 80% | 0.25% | VCNS | 40% | 60% | 0.25% | VBAL | 60% | 40% | 0.25% | VGRO | 80% | 20% | 0.25% | VEQT | 100% | 0% | 0.25% | | | | | iShares | | | | XBAL | 60% | 40% | 0.20% | XGRO | 80% | 20% | 0.20% | | | | | BMO | | | | ZCON | 40% | 60% | 0.20% | ZBAL | 60% | 40% | 0.20% | ZGRO | 80% | 20% | 0.20% | As long as they match your desired stock/bond split, all of these ETFs can be great choices at a tiny fraction of the cost, and with vastly superior T-Rex Scores, compared to typical balanced mutual funds. A couple of other notes: 1. Do you remember what the stock market did this past Christmas Eve? It dropped 3%, the worst Christmas Eve performance ever recorded. Do you remember what happened two days later, on Boxing Day? The Dow Jones Index gained over 1,000 points, its biggest one day point gain of all time! It seemed like holiday madness. Now, less than 3 months later, we barely remember. The lesson is......ignore the day to day market noise. Make sure you have the right stock/bond mix to match your risk tolerance, time frame, etc. and get on with life! 2. For those who missed it, you might enjoy these short YouTube videos on Beating the Bank! Your comments are always welcome. Just reply to this email. Larry | | | |
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