***updated this post to reflect the fact that XEQT has dropped XUS from its portfolio as of July 2, 2025***

This post is inspired by my original on the topic, “What’s the deal with XGRO“? XGRO is great, but since my target asset allocation is only 15% bonds, and XGRO’s bond target is 20%, there’s some tweaking I have to do in order to reduce the bond exposure. That tweak is increasingly being provided by XEQT, part of the same iShares family that produced XGRO.

(As mentioned elsewhere, I rely heavily on all-in-one ETFs in my retirement portolio. New to all-in-ones? Read a bit about them here.)

XEQT, like XGRO, is actually investing in thousands¹ of different stocks. Unlike XGRO, it does not hold any bonds at all. I thought it would be interesting to see what, exactly, is underneath every $100 you invest in XEQT. See the results below:

Fund	What is it?	How much?	Compare with XGRO23
ITOT/ XTOT4	Broad US stock coverage that tracks the S&P Total Market Index, about 2529 companies (top holdings: Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta)	$43.62 of your $100 investment	$36.32 of your $100 investment
XEF	Broad international (Europe, Asia, Australia) stock coverage that tracks the MSCI EAFE Investable Market Index, about 2500 holdings	$25.25 of your $100 investment	$19.76 of your $100 investment
XIC	Broad Canadian stock coverage that tracks the S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index, about 223 companies (top holdings: RBC, Shopify, TD, Enbridge, Brookfield)	$25.71 of your $100 investment	$20.09 of your $100 investment
XEC	3000+ emerging market stocks that track the MSCI Emerging Markets Investable Market Index	$5.04 of your $100 investment	$4.07 of your $100 investment

The top 10 stocks of XEQT as of today looks like this:

Ticker	Company	Investment for every $100
NVDA	Nvidia	$2.99
MSFT	Microsoft	$2.70
AAPL	Apple	$2.26
RY	Royal Bank	$1.67
AMZN	Amazon	$1.54
SHOP	Shopify	$1.35
TD	TD Bank	$1.15
META	Meta	$1.09
AVGO	Broadcom	$0.96
ENB	Enbridge	$0.88
Total		$16.59

The top stock holding outside North America belongs to Taiwan Semiconductor, at 46 cents for every $100 invested. Additionally, the geographic exposure looks like this:

One other little tidbit that might be interesting: the distribution yield of XEQT is 2.94% compared with 2.91% for XGRO. This I find a bit surprising, since I would have expected XGRO’s yield to be quite a bit better.

1. 8,550 to be precise, as of today ↩︎
2. As of today, might be different from when I wrote https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/01/30/whats-the-deal-with-xgro/ ↩︎
3. And, if you’re really paying attention, you’ll see that the dollar amounts of this column add up to roughly $80, in keeping with the 80/20 philosophy of XGRO. ↩︎
4. i lump these together because they hold exactly the same thing. Some loophole that iShares needs to exploit, I gather. ↩︎
5. On the date I pulled these numbers, cash cracked the top 10 for a holding of $1.34, which is not usual, so I just dropped it. Not sure why that is…perhaps by the end of the month it will resolve itself. ↩︎