Market Outlook. Has seen twice as many inflows in fixed incomes compared to equities year to date. Bear sentiment in the market, particularly at the start of the year. Believes there may be reason to temper some of that pessimism going forward. Has seen outflows from emerging markets and international equities due to trade tensions, no-deal Brexit, tensions between Japan and South Korean, and political tension in Italy.

Banks. Up until recently the consensus was we were entering a slow steady path of rising interests rates. One of the classic way of playing that was with the banks. With the sudden reversal of feds signal and rate cut in July a lot of the profits have been giving back. The herd is moving where the consensus dictates.

Cannabis. Canada is an innovator in this space in the sense that the first marjiuana industry ETFs were available in Canada. HMMJ from Verizon being a prime example. We are seeing the U.S. catching up. The space is so volatile with so many ways to play it investors should take an active solutions if they want to profit from this on the long term.

Actrively managed small cap ETF? There are small caps ETFs, there are actively managed ETFs, but it's hard to find both. Dynamic iShares Active Canadian ETFs is an active one but it has some large caps in there as well. There are some small caps ETFs, Manulife has some for the U.S, kinda active in a sense, pretty close to the index. Perhaps you shoud look outside of ETFs for this.

ETF with small to mid-cap oil and gas? Some of the older ETFs in Canada play this directly, BMO has ZJN and ZJO, those are perfectly good ETFs, they charge around 0.60 MER, a bit higher of what we see from current generation products. Very volatile. Thinks there is a reason to be optimisic regarding oil and gas. Would be cautious, very risky, particularly in the junior space.

Tax efficiency in non-registered accounts. There was some comments in the recent budget about the way income is tagged to redeemers. A bit technical but it did seem to affects a whole bunch of mutual funds and ETFs. Feels there isn't the perfect amount of clarity from regulators. We're in a little bit of a position of ignorance regarding the tax efficiency of these products. As far as exposure goes it's a very good product, if you really want tax efficiency he would compare similar products like VBAL or XBAL and pick the one with the lowest yield.

Within an RRSP. One of his favorite dividend ETF in Canada. He warns that he is not a tax expert, but generally in an RRSP you would not want Canadian eligible dividends like this one. You'd rather put bonds ETFs or foreign equity ETFs.

Global REIT ETF. Been around for over 10 years. He wouldn't think of this ETF as a core holding. If you are a believer in a need for alternatives in your portfolio, a little uncorrelated from global equity markets or bond markets, then this one fits in. Overweight the U.S.. MER is on the higher side at 0.72. If you have an MSCI World or Global Equity ETF in your portfolio you probably already hold many of these securities. If you hold just a bit of Canada, then maybe a small weight in CGR can be a diversifier.

Gold makes sense as a small part of many investors portfolios as an alternative asset class. In the recent market panic gold rallied quite a bit. Thinks perhaps it rallied too much. A small position in gold or other precious metals no more than single-digit % could make sense purely as a diversifier. As a long term buy and hold he would suggest to trim. If you look at the producers he would look at them just like any other equities, look at their book, the management, debt to equity ratio, geographic risks, etc.

Been around for a long time. Very popular on its initial launch. Diversified financials. If you are very yield sensitive you should perhaps consider keeping it. If you are thinking of it as a real kinda cushion for your savings he would recommend a more diversified portfolio beside just financials. 53% bank allocation.

(A Top Pick Oct 18/18, Up 9%) At the time they were feeling pretty good about Canada and they still are. Total return swap. Derivative contracts. The cheapest ETF in Canada at only 0.03% MER. Because of the uncertainty around its derivative structure its hard to say if its tax efficiency will cary forward in exactly the same way.

MER factor in the decision of an ETF? It's a very important factor but not the most important. Bid-asks spreads, fund internal trading expenses ratios, which are not necessarily referred to as part of the MER, but really the most important part is the underlying exposure.

(A Top Pick Oct 18/18, Down 9%) A very long-term hold. Still believes the value factor will reward long term investors. In the current environment it make sense to really consider pure passive index as your primary equity exposure instead.

(A Top Pick Oct 18/18, Up 11%) Multi-asset portfolio ETF. A testimate to the confounding power of the low-volatility anomaly. Low vols stocks tend to do very well. If you are thinking of a passive ETF like VBAL or XBAL, this ETF gives the same sort of exposure but restricts the equities securities to low volatility for Canada, US, international and merging markets.

Long-term TFSA hold? Yet another multi-asset ETF. Balanced portfolio 60/40 made of other low costs Vanguard funds. Really great for what it is. You can set it and forget it. Good product if you are a long term investor and want one single holding in your TFSA. You can go with VGRO if you want more growth or VCNS for conservative. There are similar products from iShares, BMO and Horizons. Can't comment for the tax-efficiency he would recommend going to a tax expert.