John DeGoey Vanguard Cdn. Aggreg. Bond ETF VAB-T COMMENT Jul 12, 2012

A fairly low fee and gives exposure to the entire Canadian bond market. The “entire” Canadian bond market is probably a bit riskier than what most retail investors want to get out of their fixed income exposure, because of the long maturities that are out there. This has a weighted average duration of about 7 years. He supplements this with some shorter term, corporate credit ETF’s, to bring down the overall risk of the whole portfolio.

They are not going to crank the rates up soon, so he would prefer to use this one.

(A Top Pick May 26/16. Down 0.81%.) This has lost a bit of ground, but on a total return basis, because of the yield to maturity, it is still a little bit up. There are bonds in this and they are paying a coupon, so it is doing what it is supposed to do. It is meant to be the ballast in a portfolio, not meant to deliver total returns.

An aggravate bond ETF. He sits on this kind of thing as a core anchor. The bond universe has many long bonds and they are not likely to be stellar performers.