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Besides my ETF positions I do hold two stocks they are Fortis and Loblaws. I guess they can described as low beta stocks.

It’s hard to get a politician (or anyone for that matter) to do something that may not be in their best interest. Remove trade barriers and some will undoubtedly lose jobs/profits that will show up in the ballot box down the road. These sorts of things won’t happen fully until there is no choice. There aren’t a lot of altruists in the world. That would apply to countries as well and yet we have many trade agreements between nations. At some point we have to wake up to the fact that open trade creates net economic benefits and jobs even if some uncompetitive industries shut down.

Its hard to object to holding stocks in low-cost, market-weighted indexes. An Austrian (?) with a bee in his bonnet expanded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-volatility_anomaly with a pretty good overview of the evidence that people are drawn to high-volatility investments and that they have poor return for a given level of risk (there is also the mathematics of volatility decay, where a 50% rise followed by a 50% decline leaves you behind). But lots of timeless truths in finance stop working one day and nobody is sure why.

The 2% and 1% are all part of the same offer so best to just look at it as a blended rate. In my opinion, unless you are just transferring cash, it is probably less work to transfer an entire account than a partial account. If you have $1m in an account, why hive off $250k to get $5k bribe when you could just send the whole thing and get $12.5k? Sure, the blended rate is only 1.25% in this scenario but an extra $7.5k is nothing to sneeze at. Fair enough. It just so happens I have a registered account in the $275k range that would fit nicely with this offer.

I agree references to Warren's 90/10 recommendation is American centric from an American. The equity portion should be more globally balanced.

The theory of factor investing can look great but that does not mean that any specific fund will apply it successfully in the future. Indeed. True of any investment strategy that relies heavily on backtesting. Experienced history is just one data point among an infinity of other possibilities. Why privilege that one? The other consideration is that, if we do believe that history persists, once someone discovers a factor and exploits it, others will observe and do the same. At an extreme, this might make the factor counter-productive. Perhaps sell short factors for which investors show enthusiasm? Personally, I don't do factor investment -- too risky for me, as I lose the advantage of broad diversification. George

[ I can understand why a PE ratio of 13 might be much better than 39 P/E ratios are an important tool, but I learned very long ago that it is not the only one, or even the most important in many situations. For example, it doesn't adequately capture growth prospects, or volatility, or the probability of going bankrupt. Same with the S&P 500. It’s hard to argue about its stellar short to medium term historical performance. Still, I hear more (supposedly) experienced investors suggesting to beginners that they should go all in an S&P index fund. That is reportedly Warren Buffett's advice long ago -- 90% a S&P stock fund and 10% in fixed income. I suppose that today he might advocate for a global fund, like VT. In any case, looking at the S&P's performance since I started investing, I didn't do all that much better on my own. George

The American fund has a turnover over 71% a year too. Its Canadian cousin CI Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility Index ETF ( ULV ) wraps it with the extra withholding taxes. It looks like the poor performance began in April 2020, and a low volatility fund is supposed to fall behind in a boom, but I wonder how it will look in March 2030. The theory of factor investing can look great but that does not mean that any specific fund will apply it successfully in the future.

A 1-2% bribe has just been announced by email (2% on the first $250k and 1% after that, for new and existing clients, minimum $10k transfer) and is online as well. Wow that is a significant change to the offer from when I posted it up-thread (250k vs 50k for the 2% rate) What happened with this offer? The name of the offer is the same ("Real Financial Progress") but the amounts went up significantly since originally posted. Did they just decide to quietly boost the offer? I wonder if this decision relates to their recent decision to get rid of trading and account fees? Perhaps they have lost a lot of assets and this is their big play to turn things around. I still have about 6 months (out of 24) remaining on my Wealthsimple bribe but I'm tempted to transfer back to BMOIL. I don't remember BMOIL ever having such a generous offer in the past. This might be as good as it gets and could be the only time they offer it. I'm a bit torn. I asked them and was told the offer is retroactively applied even if it was 2% for 50k when one enrolled, also, all accounts are included (registered and non registered, Joints and singles). Sounds really too good to be true although I don't know how they can account for Joints. It's really the best, yet, for any big bank brokerages. I am suspecting other big banks may/will need to follow something similar with 12 months to avoid losing lots of assets.

I’m not anti-index but I prefer active management to ETFs, simply because I won’t limit my potential returns to that of any index... It's only fair to point out also that, "I’m not anti-index but I prefer active management to ETFs, simply because I won’t limit my potential returns losses to that of any index." Or as Ted Cadsby put it, "Successful investing, based on indexing, depends on trading off the low possibility of doing better than the index, for the high probability of doing better than most other funds." A banana is a banana so I’ll buy the one from the vendor that sells it at $0.69/lb vs the one that sells it at $0.79/lb. I don’t know much about buying individual stocks so I’ll trust a money manager that does. I’ve only found two money managers that I like and one of them is CC&L whose funds aren’t offered to the retail investor. Luckily for me, they’re available in my company DCPP at very low management fees. When trying to understand why my money manager would hold Dollar Tree stock as one of their top holdings vs another stock like Dollarama, I can understand why a PE ratio of 13 might be much better than 39 yet most will flock to Dollarama with the much higher PE ratio because of it’s stellar performance over the short to medium historical returns. I can understand that the growth in Dollarama is pretty much all priced in and why my money manager would choose to invest in Dollar Tree. Same with the S&P 500. It’s hard to argue about its stellar short to medium te

SPLV has a beta of 0.34. Its ten-year return is 8.20% compared to SPY's return of 15.27%. George

Something called the PowerShares S&P International Developed Low Volatility Index ETF (ILV) seems to have been quietly closed in April 2023. Invesco still offers an Invesco S&P International Developed Low Volatility ETF ( IDLV ). They turn over 70% of their portfolio a year. RBC still offers a RBC QUBE Low Volatility series of mutual funds.with a few billion under management. Portfolio turnover is pretty high at 50-70% a year. Its definitely a good argument for simple market-cap weighted indexes that turnover is tiny and the market maker and the taxman can't rake off much.