John Hood BMO MSCI EAFE Hedged TO CAD ZDM-T TOP PICK Apr 13, 2015

(Top Pick May 8/15, Down 11.57%) He never does well on Europe. It suffered along with the rest of them.

A good ETF. He prefers FEZ-N, an unhedged version of the European stock index. If you look at where the euro is now, he can’t see any reason to hedge it out.

Stocks outside North America such as UK, Japan and so on. It is good filler in your portfolio because everyone is too much in North America. He is not crazy about the hedge on it. The Canadian dollar has more headwinds than tailwinds.

An example of a core holding for an international equity. It is currency hedged, so it is hedged against the fall of other global currencies relative to CAD, mostly euro and Asian currencies. If you believe that international equities are going to perform well over the future, but it is going to be export driven companies that do well, you may wish to bias towards large caps.

(Top Pick Jan 13/17, Up 3%) It weights companies by market cap. It is one of his core ETFs for the world outside of Canada/US.

Is the hedging aspect hurting the performance? This was a core holding for him. Earlier in the year he moved from being currency hedged to unhedged. Currencies in the EAFE index will be accretive, so you are better not to have the currency hedged.

There are many EAFE. This is cheap. That is why he likes it. Doesn’t have small caps.

This is a broad market ETF with a hedge to Canadian dollars. Japan represents about 25% of the holdings. Ishares has an ETF (CJP-T) that with hedged currency that he likes. He currently holds about 2% of Japan in his portfolio, looking to buy more on weakness.

(A Top Pick January 13/17 Up 17%) The return followed the market as was expected, due to its beta based on the international market. He likes it as a core holding. The ETF is quite liquid and has a built in currency hedge with exposure to large cap European and international holdings.