index etf

Natural gas has some of the most volatile and unpredictable price movements among mainstream commodities. In the past, this has caused considerable losses for even highly experienced trading teams at major financial institutions. Natural gas lived up to its reputation in November 2018 with the US Natural Gas ETF (UNG) delivering a 43.1% increase in the unit price....

ISHARES S&P/TSX 60 INDEX ETF $22.97 (Toronto symbol XIU; TSINetwork ETF Rating: Conservative; Market cap: $8.6 billion) is a low-fee way to buy the top Canadian listed stocks. Specifically, the ETF holds stocks that represent the S&P/TSX 60 Index—the largest, most heavily traded equities on the TSX.


The ETF’s top holdings are Royal Bank, 8.8%; TD Bank, 8.5%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 5.6%; CN Rail, 5.0%; Suncor Energy, 4.8%; Enbridge, 4.2%; Bank of Montreal, 4.0%; Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, 3.2%; and Canadian Natural Resources, 3.1%.


The industry breakdown is as follows: Financials (39%), Resources (29%), Industrials (11%), Telecommuncations (7%), Consumer discretionary (4%), Consumer staples (4%), Information technology (4%), Utilities (2%) and others (1%).


The S&P/TSX 60 Index mostly consists of high-quality companies....

A: In May 2018, Bank of Nova Scotia’s asset-management business, Scotia Global Asset Management, announced the launch of its Scotia Strategic ETF Portfolios.

These “smart beta” ETF portfolios include fixed-income, Canadian, U.S. and global equity funds....

October 2018 was a month that investors in risky assets would rather forget. Some of the top-performing ETFs over the preceding months lost considerable value in October. For example, the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (HMMJ) dropped 30%, although it remains up 76% over a year earlier....

This month, we look at a new ETF that aims to focus on companies that will benefit from the fast-growing video gaming and eSports sector. Another ETF seeks to find companies that have registered blockchain patents.


VANECK VECTORS VIDEO GAMING AND eSPORTS ETF $27.60 (New York symbol ESPO) invests in companies involved in video gaming and eSports.


eSports is fast becoming extremely popular and viewership is already topping some of the most popular U.S....

The runaway ETF winners in the month of September 2018 were marijuana funds ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ) and Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (HMMJ). They gained 23.1% and 20.4%, respectively. The increases for these spectaculative stocks came on top of previous gains....

Canadian ETF assets are still growing. At the end of August 2018, there were 621 ETFs in Canada, with assets under management of $163.7 billion. Total assets were 22% higher than a year earlier. They were almost double the total asset value recorded at the end of 2015.


Blackrock Canada remains the largest ETF provider with 115 funds and a 37% market share....

The six ETFs we update below mainly hold high-quality stocks that are widely traded on Canadian and U.S. exchanges. Each fund tracks the performance of a major stock market index. That’s different from ETFs focused on narrower indexes or themes such as cryptocurrencies or biotechnology.


Of course, you pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell these investments....

The big ETF winner over the past month was the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (symbol HMMJ) with a 32.3% gain. This performance was driven by a jump in share prices for its top holdings, including Canopy Growth, Aurora Cannabis, Organigram and Aphria....

We feel that investors will profit the most from a well-balanced portfolio of high-quality individual stocks, but ETFs can also play a role in a portfolio—especially low-fee funds.


ETF providers are now cutting fees even lower to gain market share. That further boosts their appeal as an alternative to pricey mutual funds, although even they are reducing their fees to compete.


In the U.S., Fidelity has recently started offering two index mutual funds with zero expense ratios—Fidelity Zero Total Market Index, a U.S....