Mike Philbrick IShares MSCI EAFE IMI Index XEF-T BUY Jan 26, 2024

(A Top Pick Dec 16/16. Up 12.11%.) He would encourage people to start looking more seriously outside of North America, and the 1^st stop is the EAFE index. This is essentially the equivalent of the S&P 500, every big brand name that you can think of outside of New York. He likes that this has less of a tech focus than the S&P 500.

Sell this and Buy the hedged version? He just took off of his Canadian hedges today. The Cdn$ has had a strong run up, and there are built-in expectations by the Bank of Canada that the Cd$ is going to go higher. Thinks Bank of Canada has gotten a little ahead of itself and the inflation and growth forecasts for next year are a little too robust. He wouldn’t be worried about the Cdn$ going up further. If you want to be long the US market, you want to stay with the unhedged version.

Is this a long term holding? Similar to iShares MSCI EAFE Index ETF (CAD-Hedged) (XIN-T) which is hedged. This ETF goes into some small caps where XIN-T doesn’t. He is comfortable with that for EAFE. He thinks there is nothing wrong with this one. He would buy it as a long term holding.

XAW-T vs. XEF-T. XAW-T is an all world ETF with broader exposure. His favourite way to play international is good quality, high dividend paying stocks in Europe with a covered call overlay. ZWE-T is his choice.

It is one of his core ETFs for international exposure. He likes the broad diversification and the low cost.

XEF is the biggest of the international ETFs, where IMI stands for "investable market index"; developed countries that are not NA, but not EM countries either. Less risky than EMs. Good entry point at only 22 bps.

ZEA tracks just the vanilla MSCI, and it's just the large caps.

Be careful mixing and matching international with EM exposure. For example, FTSE and Vanguard consider South Korea to be a developed country, but MSCI does not. So you may end up with gaps or overlaps.