Mutual Funds and ETF’s 2

As I said yesterday, if you do not want to do the work, index funds or ETF’s might be for you. Often the MER (the fund charges) are under 1% and many are under .50%

For Index Funds, go to http://globefunddb.theglobeandmail.com/gishome/plsql/gis.fund_filter?pi_type=B, which is the Globe and Mail’s fund site. This is under the Globe Fund section and research tool of Fund Filter. Under the Fund/ Company Group, find the bank or fund company you want. Beside the Index Fund indicator, show Index Funds. When you press Get Results, you will get a list of Index Funds for the bank or fund company you indicated. Once you get results, this new page will have several tabs. To see MER, click the Key Facts tab.

For Index funds, most companies have Canadian, International, European, American and Japanese Index Funds. They will also have Bond Funds, which I do not recommend. You can make more money just buying Canadian Government or Provincial Bonds that getting a bond fund.

To get the ETF’s (Exchange Traded Funds) you have to go to Globe Investor section of this site as these are traded on a stock exhange. Go to http://www.globeinvestor.com/v5/content/filters for the research tool of filters. The Exchange you want is the Toronto Stock Exchange and security you want is ETF. Press Get Results. You do not want the Bull and Bear ETF’s. You want iShares (of Barclay’s Bank) or Claymore Investments.

I know the iShares better than the Claymore Investments ETFs’. Under iShares, you can get ETF’s to cover the most of the TSX indexes, as well as the whole TSX. You can also get information on iShares at http://ca.ishares.com. On the first page, if you are asked, say you are an individual investor. On this site you can get information on all their ETF’s. Under the Document Library, you can get annual and semi-annual reports. These reports will tell you what each ETF was invested in at the time of the report.

ETF’s you might be interested in are the CDN Dividend Index Fund (TSX-XDV) and the CDN Jantzi Social Index fund (TSX-XEN). See my blog on Social Investing in May 2008 for more information on the CDN Jantzi Social Index Fund. The CDN Dividend Index Fund is 30 of the largest dividend paying stocks under the TSX. These tend to be the sort of stocks I invest in.

This blog is meant for educational purposes only, and is not to provide investment advice. Before making any investment decision, you should always do your own research or consult an investment professional. See my website at www.spbrunner.com/stocks.html for a list of the stocks for which I have put up spreadsheets on web site.