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.

Canadian ETF for gold? If you want gold bullion there is CGL which is currency-hedged, there is also a slighly cheaper product from Purpose, KILO is the ticker. Thinks if you think to allocate to gold it does make sense to currency-hedge due to falling rates in the U.S. If you want gold miners there is GOGO that has a bit of quant methodology.

Historical price of platinum vs gold? Can't comment on industrial usage of platinum vs palladium. Unlike gold, platinum and palladium do have industrial uses, so as gold, but gold primarily has a consumer use and a psychological use as a saftey asset. He would be very careful to read into the historical ratios and betting on reversion trade and the behavior of platinum relative to gold and so on.

Very popular ETF. It uses a covered call to generate yields. Holds tech giants primarily in the U.S. A great high-yield way to get technology exposure. In his mind investing in technology is all about participating in future growth. Feels putting a covered-call overlay kinda defeats a bit of the purpose. Prefers plain-vanilla technology ETF.

Precious metals royalty and streamers ETF? There isn't really a pureplay streamer. U.S. Global offers a kinda quant index gold ETF, GOGO in Canada and GOAU in the U.S. One third or one fifth of their portfolio are the streamers which tends to be a little less volatile. Doesn't think you can get pureplay streamers ETF but you can get very healthy allocation to them. One of the new ETF which is still relatively small. You should trade this carefully using limit orders only. One little annoyance is that small ETF have started getting delisted overtime if they don't attract any assets. Not saying it's going to happen here. You don't lose your money if it get delisted you get it back it's just a tax event.

Good entry point? Active ETF. Philosophy behind it is really risk management. Very new, been around for barely more than a year. Quite a bit less volatile than any other Canadian dividend ETF. Canadian exposure with downside risk protection. If downside risk keeps you up at night you might want to consider adding bonds. For global exposure with very thoughtful oversight towards risk-managed global dividend mandate, thinks it's quite promising.

When rates go up, bonds prices fall, and vice-versa. Because this is on the short end of the spectrum it's less sensitive. BMO has a grade of 9 products for the 3 major exposures (corporate, provincial and federal bonds) and the 3 major terms lengths (short-term 0-5 years, medium-term 5-10, and long-term 10 and above). BMO's aggregate bonds until recently, ZAG, was made up by mixing those 9 products, they've started to unwrap that and now they owns the bonds directly. You need to look at the yields to maturity and total return chart. Many bonds are trading at a premium of their par-value, and if this ETF is rolling those bonds its net asset value is going to decate over time even if you are collecting a coupon that compensates you for that. So not very tax-efficient. ZPS is probably one of the better ones since it doesn't have those medium or long-term bonds. Provincial bonds are in between, they have medium risk in the world of fixed-income investing. For a core bond holding you might want to have ZAG which has a 7-8 year duration and mix in a little bit of the short-term. Maybe a little too sensitive to interests rate but not the case if you are banking on them falling and you want to participate in the price appreciation.