Tag: TD

News: Vanguard reduces fees on their all-in-ones

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Summary: Vanguard asset allocation funds aka all-in-one funds VEQT, VGRO, VBAL, VCNS. VSIP have reduced their management fees to 0.17%, down from 0.22%, effective November 18, 2025.

It’s a good time to be an all-in-one investor, as I am. New to all-in-ones? Read all about them here.

The summary pretty much says it all. It just got cheaper to own Vanguard’s all-in-one funds. The amount of the reduction amounts to 50 cents for every $10001 invested per year, but compounded over many years, and multiplied by however much you have saved for retirement, it can be a surprisingly large number.

All-in-ones are much cheaper than either roboadvisors or your typical financial advisor, but as we studied before, they’re not without some cost, so fee reductions are always welcomed. Vanguard joins TD and BMO in reducing the cost of their all-in-ones. We looked at the makeup of each of these funds lately; there’s not a huge amount of difference, no matter which one you pick.

Anyway, you may note that Blackrock’s XEQT/XGRO/XINC family is now the most expensive of the lot; there’s no reason for that to be true given the competitive landscape. I would expect Blackrock to follow suit, or if not, I’ll probably be making some moves to get to lower fees, since a lot of my retirement portfolio is currently tied up in XEQT/XGRO. ZEQT/ZGRO I think is the closest in makeup to the XEQT/XGRO family.

  1. Of course, if you only have $1000 saved for retirement, you have other worries. ↩︎

Underlying indices of all-in-ones

RobH1 Comment

(New to asset allocation ETFs aka all-in-ones? Here’s a good place to start.)

Asset allocation ETFs can be purchased from any number of companies. In this article, we look at 4 of the biggest names:

  • TD, with TEQT, TGRO, TBAL et al
  • Blackrock/iShares with XEQT, XGRO, XBAL et al
  • BMO with ZEQT, ZGRO, ZBAL et al
  • Vanguard with VEQT, VGRO, VBAL et al

The blueprint for each of these ETFs are similar: pick Canadian, US, International and (where applicable1) bond indices, pick a target percentage allocation for each slice of the pie, and carry on…

I previously talked about the variations in percentage allocation (the size of the pie slices) between the major funds over here.

But what about the indices that each of the major fund families track? What’s in the pie? Are there significant differences? Here’s a summary of what I found:

TD
iSharesBMO Vanguard
TEQT, TGRO, TBALXEQT, XGRO, XBALZEQT, ZGRO, ZBALVEQT, VGRO, VBAL
CAD EquitySolactive Canada Broad MarketS&P/TSX Capped Composite
S&P/TSX Capped Composite		FTSE Canada All-Cap
US EquitySolactive US Large Cap CAD IndexS&P Total MarketS&P 500
S&P Midcap 400
S&P SmallCap 600
CRSP US Total Market
Int’l EquitySolactive GBS Developed Markets ex North America Large & Mid Cap CADMSCI EAFE® Investable Market, MSCI Emerging Markets Investable MarketMSCI EAFE Index, MSCI Emerging Markets IndexFTSE Developed all-cap, FTSE Emerging all-cap
Bonds FTSE Canada Universe Bond IndexFTSE Canada Universe Bond Index and othersFTSE Canada Universe Bond Index and othersBloomberg Global Aggregate Canadian Float Adjusted Bond

So there is variation in the pie recipes (the underlying indices), but is it really of any significance? At a glance, I wonder how different the offerings from iShares and BMO actually are — the same index providers show up in each. Without looking at what stocks are actually found in each of these, here’s a quick take, simply based on the names of the indices:

  • Canadian Equity: All of these funds hold the broad Canadian market, over three different index providers23. iShares and BMO use a capped index, which, in theory, should limit exposure to the very largest Canadian businesses somewhat.
  • US Equity: Three different index providers seen here (Solactive, S&P and CRSP). TD only holds large US companies, the others hold smaller and midsized US companies. In the last ten years, this has been a winning strategy, but it’s not always been that way.
  • International Equity: Three different index providers: Solactive, MSCI, FTSE. TD excludes emerging markets (e.g. Brazil, Russia, Taiwan, China, India). The others don’t.
  • Bonds: Hard to tell just based on the names, but three of them use the same FTSE index. Vanguard uses a Bloomberg index. So I’ll say that it’s likely that Vanguard’s bond portfolio will look different from the other three.

In a future post, I’ll delve into what the main holdings of each of these funds are in each of these categories to see what differences emerge. And whether these differences actually matter!

  1. This excludes 100% equity funds like XEQT, naturally ↩︎
  2. The “composite” in “Capped Composite” means “all the stocks of the TSX”. ↩︎
  3. Solactive, S&P and FTSE ↩︎

Online brokerage promos: when does the gravy train end?

RobH7 Comments

Online brokers are busily throwing money around to attract new customers; a quick search reveals many active promotions as I write this from Webull Canada, RBC, TD, QTrade, Wealthsimple….All of it has a bit of “if this seems too good to be true, it probably is” flavour to it.

I asked this same question on Reddit and the consensus seemed to be that this is the new normal in the online brokerage world, just like it’s normal for telcos/cablecos/ISPs to throw around big discounts in order to steal customers from one another.

But yet, I feel a little uneasy how money for nothing has become the norm. For DIY investors like me, it’s hard to see how my providers make any money off of me. I did a bit of research into the best proxy I could think of…Robinhood.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Robinhood is now part of the S&P 500 lineup; this is no fly-by-night company. Their quarterly results are public, and it was quite illuminating. Robinhood’s most recent quarter’s results are shown below.

Robinhood revenue sources: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So it looks pretty straightforward; revenue is coming from three sources, and their average revenue per user (ARPU) is a pretty healthy $151 dollars. Let’s look a bit further:

  • Transactions: Options trading and Crypto trading make up the bulk of the revenues here, but roughly 15% of their transaction revenue comes from basic equity trades ($66M in Q2’25).
  • Interest: a large chunk of this is interest made from margin ($114M in Q2’25), but a growing percentage comes from credit card interest charges.
  • “Other”: not elaborated further, but it’s small, so we can ignore it. Perhaps this accounts for the revenue from their 3.5M “Robinhood Gold” subscribers1

The transaction revenue was surprising to me since equity trades are free on Robinhood, yet they are still finding a way to make money. Further reading indicates that the exchanges are sharing some of their bid/ask spread revenue with Robinhood, which seems like a win/win/win: Robinhood makes a tiny bit of revenue on each trade, the exchange gets more volume which allows them to make more spread revenue, and the customer gets free trades2.

Robinhood transaction revenue: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So, assuming the Wealthsimples and Questrades of the world are following Robinhood’s lead, they are making money off of me every time I place a trade. (Sorry, I don’t trade options, I don’t trade crypto, I don’t trade on margin, and I don’t run a balance on any credit card I use). Since switching to Questrade (and getting free trades) I can tell you that my own behaviour has changed; I have always hated seeing non-productive cash in any of my accounts, and so with free trades, I can freely buy one share of something to clean up the last dribs of cash I may have in any given account. My “getting paid in retirement” strategy also requires a monthly flurry of trades (see the details here).

All this to say I feel less uneasy about the free money being thrown around; Canada’s online brokerage community seems to be following a successful playbook:

  • Get lots of customers, even if you have to pay them to get on board
  • Expand your offers, especially profitable offers, and entice as many of your army of fans to use them (crypto, margin trading, options trading, credit cards, subscription offers)
  • Invest just enough in your platform to not lose too many clients; switching online providers can take a lot of work (I know, I did it: read more here)

So my advice is to absolutely take advantage of the free money out there and enjoy the gravy!

  1. Perhaps serving as the inspiration for Questrade Plus? ↩︎
  2. Not everyone thinks this is a great idea ↩︎

Comparing asset-allocation ETFs: what’s the right allocation?

RobH1 Comment

I’ve talked about my approach to investing before, which is slavishly devoted to maintaining a constant asset allocation across all my accounts. And as I’ve mentioned, my current targets are:

  • 20% is Canadian Equity, 36% is US Equity, and 24% is International Equity, for a total of 80% equity overall
  • 15% bonds
  • 5% cash

My allocation targets were picked to align with XGRO1, which, over time, will make up more and more of my retirement portfolio2.

As I’ve written elsewhere, these are pretty broad categories and could be sub-divided further. I’ve not bothered with this myself, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to survey what the major all-equity and high-growth funds have under the hood. And so, I present this comparison:

A few notes on the above:

  • Canadian Equity: Some use an all-cap index (TGRO, VGRO) while some use a capped composite index (ZGRO, XGRO).
  • US Equity: VGRO and XGRO use an all-cap index, TGRO sticks to large cap, and ZGRO holds large, mid and small cap indices. TGRO is a bit of an outlier because it doesn’t hold small cap..
  • International Equity: TGRO takes an all countries approach, whereas the other three split between developed and emerging markets. Net effect is pretty much the same thing.
  • Bonds: Here you find the greatest variation; VGRO is the only ETF to hold bonds outside of North America whereas TGRO holds only Canadian bonds. XGRO and ZGRO are pretty similar, with XGRO having a bit more Canadian bond exposure over ZGRO.

The most notable difference between my allocations and the average allocation of the big 4 funds is that I have more international exposure than other funds, and that’s because I’ve chosen to hitch my wagon to the iShares/XGRO family.

The reason? I started investing in the iShares family some time ago because it was the family that my old provider (QTrade) allowed me to trade without fees. With my current provider (Questrade), all of the families are free to trade, and hence my continued devotion to iShares/XGRO no longer holds that attraction — I could buy any of the all-in-ones. (Indeed, I’ve actually been adding some TD all-in-ones because their management fees are a bit lower).

But this exercise has given me food for thought; perhaps I have a bit too much bias to the international equity portion of the portfolio. But honestly, I can’t believe it makes that much of a difference, and churning my portfolio simply to reduce my international exposure a point or two seems unnecessary3.

  1. Why XGRO and not an all-in-one from another company? Read on. ↩︎
  2. I’m slowly converting my main holding (AOA, which trades in USD) to XGRO on a quarterly basis so that I’m never over exposed to foreign exchange variations. I convert a percentage of these holdings annually, corresponding to the percentage at which I’m draining my RRIF. ↩︎
  3. Running some numbers through https://www.dividendchannel.com/drip-returns-calculator/ demonstrates that XGRO is the bottom of the performance pile over the past 5 years or so as compared to TGRO, ZGRO and VGRO. The difference isn’t massive, and the window is short because these funds haven’t been around all that long, but it’s another data point to consider…p.s. the tool above doesn’t (yet?) understand the 3 for 1 reverse split ZGRO undertook in August, so best to end any simulation involving the BMO funds at August 1,2025. ↩︎

News: BMO reduces fees on all-in-one ETFs

RobH1 Comment

Summary: BMO has reduced fees on its family of asset-allocation ETFs (ZCON, ZBAL, ZGRO, ZEQT) to put its Management Expense Ratio (MER) in the same realm as competing families from GlobalX, iShares and TD.

If you’re a fan of all-in-one ETFs (as I am)1, then there is a new low-cost competitor2 to consider in BMO. BMO announced a reduction in their fees last week, and per Rob Carrick, it’s a win for everyone concerned. If you’re new to the idea of all-in-one ETFs (aka asset allocation ETFs), here’s a good place to start: https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/01/21/why-you-can-fire-your-advisor-asset-allocation-etfs/.

It’s probably worth taking a quick scan of the four lowest-cost families out there. Here’s the overview.

ProviderFund Symbols
TD3TEQT, TGRO,TBAL,TCON
BMO4ZEQT, ZGRO, ZBAL, ZCON
GlobalX5HEQT, HGRW, HBAL, HCON
iShares6XEQT, XGRO, XBAL, XCNS, XINC
Low-cost all-in-one ETF providers, and the symbols you can use to buy them

In my view, any of these families are worthy of your investment dollars. Which particular fund you pick within a family depends on your tolerance for volatility and/or your timeline for needing the money you’re investing. Each list of fund symbols in the table above is listed in order of amount of equity — so for TD, you can see that TEQT has the most equity (100%) whereas TCON has the least (40%). You might want to give https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/05/06/investment-basics-asset-allocation/ a read to get more familiar with the concepts.

  1. XGRO and XEQT are both members of the coveted “ETF All Stars” slot. ↩︎
  2. There are other all-in-one families (Vanguard, Fidelity, Mackenzie), the ones shown here are the least expensive of the lot at 0.20% MER or less. TD is the current winner of the lot with a rock-bottom 0.17% MER. ↩︎
  3. TEQT launched in April 2025. ↩︎
  4. There’s also an ESG asset allocation fund, ZESG. ↩︎
  5. There’s also a bunch of covered call variations that are of no interest to me. ↩︎
  6. iShares is the family I work within. I started with them over the others because they could be traded for free on my former provider (QTrade). My current provider (Questrade) allows free trading for any ETF. ↩︎