Category: ETFs

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CAGE versus XEQT: what’s the deal?

RobHLeave a comment

It’s not that often an ETF launch causes so much buzz, but my usual feeds are all talking about Avantis CIBC CAGE. So what is it? Per its fact sheet it

Invests primarily in equity securities from developed and emerging markets through a portfolio of ETFs. The fund selects companies based on value and profitability characteristics, using a broad set of company financial fundamentals such as book value, earnings, and cash flow, together with current market prices. Designed to provide diversified global equity exposure in a single investment option.

https://www.cibc.com/content/dam/cibc-public-assets/personal-banking/investment/etfs/pdfs/cibc-fund-snapshot-cage-en.pdf

So let’s break that down:

“Invests primarily in equity securities…through a portfolio of ETFs”

Translation: CAGE is a fund of funds that’s 100% equity. Sounds a lot like XEQT/ZEQT/TEQT/VEQT. Looking a little deeper, it holds

  • CAUS: A US Equity ETF
  • CACE: A Canadian Equity ETF
  • CADE: An International Equity ETF
  • CASV: A Global Small Cap ETF
  • CAEM: An Emerging Equity ETF

Seems pretty normal so far.

“The fund selects companies based on value and profitability…using financial fundamentals”

Translation: This isn’t an index fund. CAGE is picking which companies to invest in based on balance sheet metrics. This starts to sound like a typical managed fund that typically underperforms the index it’s supposed to be measured against1.

I’m skeptical. Index (aka passive) investing has proven that it works over time.

What’s inside CAGE?

So, let’s see what’s actually inside this fund and compare it to XEQT2. As it turns out, this isn’t easy. Figuring out what’s inside CAGE requires you to navigate to each of CAGE’s holdings and look at what’s there. Irritating, but that’s not the worst of it — the constituent funds only show top 10 holdings each. That leads to a tremendous blind spot as to what you’re actually purchasing when you buy shares of CAGE. I hope CIBC fixes this, and soon. Anyway, I took XEQT’s top 10 and compared it to CAGE’s allocation.

CompanyXEQT Holding (%)CAGE Holding (%)
NVIDIA3.07%1.89%
Apple2.52%1.88%
Microsoft1.92%1.45%
Royal Bank1.81%1.88%
Amazon1.64%1.51%
Alphabet Class A1.42%0.96%
TD Bank1.30%1.44%
Broadcom1.25%<1%3
Alphabet Class C1.13%0.77%
Shopify1.07%0.99%
Total ex Broadcom15.88%12.77%
Comparing top holdings of XEQT versus CAGE

What’s immediately obvious is that CAGE doesn’t place as much money in the trillion dollar market cap companies as XEQT does.

A more interesting (?) exercise might be to take a look at CAGE’s top holdings as compared to that of XEQT.

CompanyCAGE Holding (%) / RankXEQT Holding (%)/ Rank
NVIDIA1.89% / 13.07% / 1
Apple1.88% / 22.52% /2
Royal Bank1.88% / 31.81% /4
Amazon1.51% /41.64% /5
Microsoft1.45% /51.92% /3
TD Bank1.44% /61.30% /7
Shopify0.99% /71.07% /10
Alphabet Class A0.96% /81.42% / 6
Canadian National Resources0.91% /90.72% / 16
CIBC0.86% /100.75% /14
Total14.56%17.00%
Comparing top holdings of CAGE versus XEQT

And again, not too much of interest here — CAGE holds less of the trillion dollar companies than XEQT, but the differences aren’t massive.

High level metrics

Well, since we can’t get a good feel on what’s inside CAGE, maybe looking at other vital signs are helpful?

MetricCAGEXEQT
MER0.28%40.20%
Number of underlying holdings692658475
Dividend Yield2.18%60.82%7
Target allocations8US Equity: 39.4%
Canadian Equity: 30%
International Equity: 17.6%
Global Small Cap Equity: 8%9
Emerging Equity: 5%		US Equity: 45%
Canadian Equity: 25%
International Equity: 25%
Emerging Equity: 5%
Comparing CAGE metrics with XEQT

This shows that CAGE is more expensive, holds fewer underlying stocks (we think), has a higher dividend yield (unsurprising, given its focus) and invests more in Canada than XEQT at the expense of International Equity10.

Performance

Comparing performance isn’t going to be very useful since CAGE is new, but CAGE inherits its strategy from an older US-based fund, namely AVGE. Now, to be clear, AVGE and CAGE aren’t quite the same thing. CAGE, as a Canadian fund, will tilt more to Canadian Equity holdings. But the approach used by AVGE and CAGE is the same: find quality companies and invest in them, wherever they are. So to me, comparing AVGE to its benchmark, the MSCI all-country investable market index, is a fair comparison. That index can be purchased by buying ACWI, an ETF that I’ve never heard of. I have heard of VT, so I’ll throw that into the mix since that seems to be a similar idea. Here’s what https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/11 had to say about that:

Comparing performance of VT, ACWI and AVGE to gauge effectiveness of Avantis’ stock picking techniques

AVGE doesn’t have a hugely long track record either (less than 4 years in existence) but, regrettably, it’s coming up on the short end of the stick as compared to the passive index funds. Not by a lot, though.

My take

Buzz or no, I don’t think this product is for me. I buy passively managed ETFs, for the most part12. The lack of transparency on CAGE’s holdings is irritating (I am hoping/assuming that CIBC will fix this) and there’s nothing about the performance of its US sister that leaves me with FOMO. I’ll stick with The magnificent seven ETFs for now.

  1. Canada’s own CPP fund is, sadly, one of those ↩︎
  2. As of April 30, 2026 for both. I note that XEQT provides daily updates on one screen to see what’s inside. For CAGE, you have to resort to spreadsheets. ↩︎
  3. The constituent ETFs of CAGE only show top 10 holdings; Broadcom doesn’t crack the top 10 of CAUS which is 40.13% of CAGE. ↩︎
  4. Per https://usegreenline.com/en-ca/articles/cage-etf-explained. ↩︎
  5. 1782 for CAUS per https://www.investing.com/etfs/caus-toronto-holdings, 299 for CACE per https://www.investing.com/etfs/cace-toronto-holdings, 2403 for CADE per https://www.etfrc.com/CADE.TO, 1316 for CASV per https://www.investing.com/etfs/casv-toronto-holdings, 1126 for CAEM per https://ca.investing.com/etfs/caem-toronto-holdings for a total of 6926. For reasons unclear, CIBC doesn’t seem to think it’s worthy of them to publish this information themselves. ↩︎
  6. As of end April 2026, the latest thing published ↩︎
  7. As of end May 2026. ↩︎
  8. For CAGE, refer to https://www.cibc.com/content/dam/cibc-public-assets/personal-banking/investment/etfs/pdfs/cibc-fund-snapshot-cage-en.pdf. For XEQT, refer to https://www.blackrock.com/ca/investors/en/literature/product-brief/core-etf-portfolios-product-brief.pdf ↩︎
  9. 60% is US Equity, 4% is Canadian Equity per https://www.cibc.com/en/personal-banking/investments/etfs/avantis-global-small-cap-value-etf.html ↩︎
  10. XEQT is a bit of an outlier here; read Are my portfolio’s asset allocation targets “correct”? ↩︎
  11. It seems that my formerly preferred tool has gone to a registration process; I’ll have to revisit Tools I Use I guess… ↩︎
  12. Bond funds are often actively managed. ↩︎

variety of cookies in a box

What’s in my retirement portfolio (May 2026)?

RobH1 Comment

This is a monthly look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

  • 5 RRIF accounts
    • 3 for me (Questrade, Wealthsimple)
    • 2 for my spouse (Questrade)
  • 2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
  • 4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)

The view post-payday

I pay myself monthly in retirement, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On May 29 before the markets opened, this is what it looked like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, (and if not an all-star, they are probably on the Magnificent Seven ETFs list). The charts look almost identical to the previous month; AOA is up a bit mostly because the USD has been on a bit of run this month, increasing almost 1% month over month :

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

Here I have some work to do, since I’ve recently revisited the target allocations I have for each asset class:

  • 5% cash or cash-like holdings like ICSH and ZMMK
  • 15% bonds/income (most are buried in XGRO and AOA, rest are in XCB)
  • 23% Canadian equity (mostly based on ETFs that mirror the S&P/TSX — HXT and XIC); this is up from the old 20% target
  • 37% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500); this is up 1% from the old target
  • 20% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets); this is down 4% from the old target

At the same time, I’m looking to get rid of my USD allocations since they are adding needless complexity and I no longer have a way to easily spend USD anyway. This is going to be a multi-month process1, but I want to be USD free by the end of the year.

So, next month, I will begin. I’ll first tackle ICSH in my non-registered account, which I’ll do once it pays out its monthly dividend in the first week of June. And I’ll begin replacing AOA with XGRO2.

Overall

Part of using VPW3 as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. And once again, a new all-time high:

My VPW-calculated salary continues to increase, albeit at a more modest rate, as expected.

  1. Multi-month because I want to make sure I don’t get burned by a sudden change in USD/CAD FX rates. By converting some every month, I can smooth out any weird spikes. ↩︎
  2. The biggest difference between AOA and XGRO (besides the native currency) is the amount of Canadian Equity content. AOA has a very small amount (about 3%) whereas XGRO has 20% ↩︎
  3. Variable Percentage Withdrawal, my chosen decumulation strategy. ↩︎
assorted sushi and sashimi platter top view

What’s in my retirement portfolio (April 2026)?

RobHLeave a comment

This is a monthly look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

  • 5 RRIF accounts
    • 3 for me (Questrade, Wealthsimple)
    • 2 for my spouse (Questrade)
  • 2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
  • 4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)

The view post-payday

I pay myself monthly in retirement1, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On April 24 at mid-day, this is what it looked like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, (and if not an all-star, they are probably on the Magnificent Seven ETFs list). The charts look almost identical to the previous month, in spite of some conversion of AOA to XGRO. (I use Norbert’s Gambit to move USD denominated funds into CAD on a quarterly basis since my spending is all in CAD).

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

It’s looking pretty close to the targets I have, which are unchanged:

  • 5% cash or cash-like holdings like ICSH and ZMMK
  • 15% bonds/income (most are buried in XGRO and AOA, rest are in XCB)
  • 20% Canadian equity (mostly based on ETFs that mirror the S&P/TSX — HXT and XIC)
  • 36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500)
  • 24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

The alignment with target is what drives my investment decisions; and here I see that the international equity portion of my portfolio has drifted 1% below target, which is usually the threshold whereby I start to pay attention. Do I need to take action to increase my International Equity portion, or is my target something to reconsider? I have some thinking to do.

Overall

Part of using VPW2 as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. Last month’s meltdown is yet another speed bump that we’ve managed to survive, and April 2026 brings me to another all time high of my retirement net worth, as compared to January 20253.

My VPW-calculated salary continues to increase, albeit at a more modest rate, as expected.

  1. Questrade, although my RRIF settings are for the last day of the month, seems to need a lot of time to process the payment; I’ve learned that unless I have cash in the account at least 3 business days prior to the last business day, the automatic payment won’t happen. ↩︎
  2. Variable Percentage Withdrawal, my chosen decumulation strategy. ↩︎
  3. In constant dollars. I should really adjust my net worth to show inflationary impacts but it’s more calculating than I feel like doing at the moment. ↩︎

What’s in my retirement portfolio (March 2026)?

RobH1 Comment

This is a monthly look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

  • 5 RRIF accounts
    • 3 for me (Questrade, Wealthsimple)
    • 2 for my spouse (Questrade)
  • 2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
  • 4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)

The view post-payday

I pay myself monthly in retirement, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On March 30, this is what it looks like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, (and if not an all-star, they are probably on the Magnificent Seven ETFs list). This split is before all the quarterly dividends have paid out. AOA, XGRO, XEQT, XIC all have a quarterly payment that collectively might skew the numbers a bit — I have all these investments on DRIP so I just buy more of the same. All that to say that there weren’t big changes month to month; my USD holdings got a bit of a boost this month thanks to a favourable exchange rate. (A lot of my retirement holdings are in USD, so the FX rates matter somewhat). Here’s what the USD has looked like in CAD since my retirement:

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

It’s looking pretty close to the targets I have, which are unchanged:

  • 5% cash or cash-like holdings like ICSH and ZMMK
  • 15% bonds/income (most are buried in XGRO and AOA, rest are in XCB)
  • 20% Canadian equity (mostly based on ETFs that mirror the S&P/TSX — HXT and XIC)
  • 36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500)
  • 24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

The alignment with target is what drives my investment decisions; seeing the chart above tells me there’s no movements needed, which makes things simpler.

Since we’re just about in to the 2nd quarter of the year, it’s time for me to move some AOA into XGRO using Norbert’s Gambit1. The Gambit has worked out pretty well for me so far; I track my effective FX rate every time I do it, and it’s always less than relying on the instant (and relatively expensive) FX conversions offered by my broker2.

Overall

Part of using VPW3 as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. As you can see below, the most recent market gyrations have had a bit of an impact on the bottom line, taking me back to a value I haven’t seen since September last year:

But my VPW-calculated salary, which has a built in shock absorber (aka cash cushion), continued its upward trend nonetheless:

I’m expecting to take a pay cut at some point if the markets fail to recover, but pay cuts are an expected outcome of using VPW as a strategy. The “V” is for “variable”, after all. At this point, I’m still taking over 10% more than I did a year ago, so no matter how you slice it, things are more than on track.

  1. Of late, my need for spending in USD seems not so critical anymore. ↩︎
  2. Typically 1.5% of the amount converted. ↩︎
  3. Variable Percentage Withdrawal, my chosen decumulation strategy. ↩︎

Ex-Dividends and Getting Paid in Retirement

RobHLeave a comment

As mentioned elsewhere, getting paid in retirement for me is a monthly activity involving selling shares (mostly XGRO), moving funds and so on. The exact date I actually DO the work is a little variable. Questrade and Wealthsimple both automatically move my RRIF payments to my bank account on the last business day of every calendar month; this means I could conceivably do my sell trades to free up cash on the next-to-last business day of every calendar month1, but usually I do it sometime in the last week of the month.

Today, (the 23rd of the month), I noticed the market doing something it hasn’t done much lately, namely go up. And since the 23rd is in the right window (nearing the end of the month), I thought, “well, maybe I could do my monthly payment today”. Admittedly, it’s probably a day or two earlier than I would normally do this, but I didn’t think it mattered too much in the big scheme.

Part of me felt a bit uneasy about doing this, it felt a bit like timing the market. But then I also remembered that since this was March, it meant that XGRO was due to pay its quarterly dividend around now.

A quick search revealed that XGRO’s “ex-dividend date” is in fact March 26, 20262. This means that anyone holding XGRO at close of business on March 25th would qualify for the dividend, which per the XGRO page, is $0.117 per unit held.

So this would mean that selling today would have been at the expense of the dividend payout for the quarter. Now, I know that this really should not matter; it’s a well established fact that the dividend-paying stock drops by the same amount as the dividend paid out on the ex-dividend date, meaning it should make zero difference whether I sell just before or just after the ex-div date.

In the end, I decided not to sell today. My usual day would actually be closer to the ex-dividend date, and psychologically, I feel like I’ve earned the dividend by holding XGRO the entire quarter. What do you think? Do you ever time your buys/sells based on ex-dividend dates? Let me know at comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. Since the settlement time of ETF trades is T+1, meaning the day after the trade completes. Notable is that Questrade requests you have funds available 3 business days before payment date; I haven’t quite figured out how strictly they enforce that. ↩︎
  2. Look at the “Distribution” section, specifically the table. ↩︎