Larry Berman CFA, CMT, CTA BMO Canadian Dividend ETF ZDV-T COMMENT Nov 16, 2020

He uses ZWC to be defensive when he's close to the high point to have more buffer for when the markets go sideways or down. From a low point, you want ZDV to get dividends without covered call. He would wait for a pullback before putting new money in.

When you go for high-dividend payers in Canada you get the banks, insurance companies, pipelines, and some of the energy names. Yield will be a bit over 4%. A nice way to play.

Vanguard, iShares, and BMO all have offerings, but they all do it slightly differently. BMO has a covered call version, ZWC. There's ZDV, XDV, VDY. Take a look at them all and see what you like. All have different weights to the components. They're all equally good.

Basket of high-dividend Canadian names. Both about 24-25% cumulative returns over the last 3 years. 

XEI more diversified with 30% financials plus 30% in energy. Slightly better MER of 22 bps. Yield is ~5.5%.

ZDV is 38% financials and 20% energy, so might make sense if you really love financials. MER is 39 bps. Yield is 3.8%.

ZDV is a large, liquid, solid dividend fund with a 3.58% yield and 5-year annualized return of 14.01%. We would be fine buying at $23 or better but with a diversified fund we would not get too stressed about pricing over a 5-year term. With the fund owning 95% Canadian stocks, for most investor a non-reg account would be best, so as to get the benefit of the dividend tax credit.
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