As mentioned elsewhere, I try to keep about 5% of my retirement savings in what I loosely refer to as “cash”. Of course, it’s not cash, cash doesn’t earn any interest, and that would drive me bonkers. Instead, I’ve been using ZMMK and ICSH (two of my ETF all-stars) to serve this purpose. I made a more detailed assessment of available products at the time over here.
But Global X (a company who I do a lot of business with, thanks to XEQT, XGRO and HXT) has launched 4 products that invest solely in US Treasury Bills.
TSTX/TSTX.U/TSTX.F: all based on 1-3 year treasury bills, which, in common bond lingo, is “short” duration. TSTX is the one that’s probably of greatest interest to most of you since it trades in CAD. TSTX.U is the same thing but it trades in USD, and TSTX.F trades in CAD but uses currency hedging to smooth out the CAD/USD exchange rate1.
TLTX/TLSX.U/TLTX.F: same idea as above, but these products are based on 20 year T-Bills, which would be considered “long” duration and are much more sensitive to changes in the prime interest rate.
They are brand spanking new (launched Oct 7, 2025), but have already paid out their first distributions at the end of October:
CAD ETF Distribution
USD (.U) ETF Distribution
Hedged (.F) ETF Distribution
TSTX family (1-3y)
0.14090
0.13991
0.13990
TLTX family (20y)
0.16056
0.15943
0.15941
The TSTX family is paying 3.4% yield, which is way better than any CAD product I’ve evaluated previously2. It’s not as good as USD HISAs, but being able to get US-like interest rates in a Canadian denominated product is a cool thing. T-Bills of this duration are not super sensitive to changes in interest rates, but the 20y ones would be. TSTX is a product I’ll be keeping an eye on as an alternative to ZMMK, potentially, as long as the prime rate in the US remains significantly higher than Canada’s.
Reduced Fees for CNDX (S&P/TSX 60 index)
Global X was running a promo this year that I talked about previously, but they’ve set a new low price for their flagship Canadian index fund at 0.09% MER starting in 2026. (The MER is 0% at the moment). I don’t hold CNDX myself (I use XIC and VCN, which both include all of the TSX and costs 0.06%), but if you like to focus on the larger part of the Canadian market, you may want to take a look here.
I don’t like hedging as a rule, as it just adds cost and I figure that over time, the USD/CAD exchange rate is reasonably stable. ↩︎
And if these ETFs existed at the time, I probably wouldn’t have looked at them because they have a duration that’s a little too long for me to consider them “cash-like”. But I like my “cash” to be cashflow positive, with no downsides. ZMMK and ICSH aren’t guaranteed to do that, but their super-short average duration (90 days or so) makes it far more likely. ↩︎
In a previous post, I took a look at the major fund companies’ all-in-one-funds with a focus on what passive indices each of them folllowed with regards to Canadian equity, US equity, International equity, and bonds. That assessment found that iShares and BMO were very similar, but TD and Vanguard looked very different.
But do different indices really make a difference in terms of what each of these companies hold when it comes to equities? That’s what we’re trying to find out. Let’s take a look at each of the categories in turn.
Canadian Equity
Let’s take a look at the top Canadian equity holdings of TEQT, XEQT, ZEQT and VEQT1:
Stock
TEQT %
XEQT %
ZEQT%
VEQT%
RBC
1.65
1.73
1.62
1.80
Shopify
1.55
1.69
1.62
1.49
TD
1.12
1.16
1.10
1.16
Enbridge
0.84
0.88
0.85
0.92
Brookfield
0.82
0.82
0.78
0.81
BMO
0.74
0.77
0.72
0.77
Agnico
0.66
0.69
0.68
0.63
Scotiabank
0.64
0.67
0.63
0.68
CIBC
0.60
0.63
0.60
0.63
CP KC
0.57
0.58
0.57
0.62
# held
292
215
215
156
Top 10 %
9.19
9.62
9.17
9.51
Top Canadian Equity Holdings for TEQT, XEQT, ZEQT, VEQT per ETF factsheets, October 2025
VEQT has fewer holdings than the others, and this indicates slightly more concentration/slightly less diversification than the other funds. TEQT is at the top of the heap when it comes to the number of companies held, with XEQT and ZEQT looking pretty similar. My take here is that the differences between TEQT/XEQT/ZEQT/VEQT are pretty slight when it comes to Canadian equity. The Canadian equity indices these funds track may be different, but the differences are pretty minor, and might simply be attributable to tracking errors; how often and when these funds rebalance their holdings may explain the differences shown here.
But just for fun, I looked at comparing VCN (which is underneath VEQT, and tracks the FTSE Canada all cap) to XIC (which is underneath XEQT, and tracks the S&P/TSX Capped Composite) and found this using https://www.dividendchannel.com/drip-returns-calculator/ (which is also listed in Tools I Use).
This indicates a tiny advantage to XIC aka the capped composite index, but there’s not a lot of daylight between these two returns!
On the Canadian Equity front, I declare the 4 funds EQUIVALENT!
US Equity
The US weighting is NOT the same for each of these funds, so making a one-to-one comparison is a bit tricky.
TEQT: 55% US
ZEQT: 50% US
XEQT, VEQT: 45% US
What I show in the table below is the percentage of the US portion held by the fund. So in other words if stock XYZ makes up 5% of the US holdings of TEQT and XEQT, it means that TEQT actually holds more of XYZ because 55 cents of every dollar of TEQT is invested in XYZ as compared to 45 cents for XEQT et al.
Stock
TEQT: TPU %
XEQT: XTOT %
ZEQT: ZSP/ZMID/ZSML%
VEQT: VUS%
NVIDIA
7.81
6.91
7.35
6.45
Microsoft
6.62
5.71
6.26
6.02
Apple
6.38
5.53
5.99
5.54
Amazon
3.73
3.24
3.45
3.49
Broadcom
2.75
2.38
2.51
2.23
Meta
2.74
2.33
2.51
2.56
Alphabet Cl A
2.43
2.07
2.26
1.97
Alphabet Cl C
2.13
1.67
1.82
1.59
Tesla
2.12
1.80
1.91
1.46
JP Morgan
1.46
1.24
1.36
1.29
Eli Lilly
1.25
1.00
1.09
1.00
Berkshire
1.15
1.33
1.47
1.43
# held
504
2494
1511
3524
Top 10 %
38.17
32.97
35.54
32.74
Top US Equity Holdings for TEQT, XEQT, ZEQT, VEQT per ETF factsheets, October 2025
What’s clear here is that TEQT is an outlier insofar as it only focuses on the largest US companies, with the other three funds including smaller companies. This also impacts how much money is found in the top 10 US holdings of TEQT, with 38% of holdings invested in names like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple et al.
This has proven beneficial of late since smaller US companies have not kept pace with the larger ones. Per spglobal.com, the 10 year performance as of Oct 13, 2025 of the three US market segments has been:
S&P SmallCap 600 = 7.65%
S&P MidCap 400 = 8.49%
S&P 500 = 12.75%
Meaning that any fund that holds smallcap and midcap US stocks has had their returns dragged down in the past 10 years.
So my conclusion for US Equities is that TEQT is the performance champion, but this comes with a less diversification than the alternatives: not only does TEQT focus on the highest-performing portion of the US equity market, it also puts more money overall into the US equity market. This has worked well for the last ten years, but it’s anybody’s guess as to whether this is a good idea for the future.
International Equity
The International2 weighting is NOT the same for each of these funds, so making a one-to-one comparison is a bit tricky.
TEQT: 20% International
VEQT: 25% International
ZEQT: 25% International
XEQT: 30% International
BMO gets the “lack of transparency” award from me for their complex structure. ZEQT holds ZEA which holds European stocks as well as IEFA, which is their USD fund holding the same things. It also holds ZEM which holds emerging markets stocks as well as EEM, which holds similar things in USD. Nowhere can you find a BMO/ZEQT consolidated view like what I’m showing below.
Like in the previous examples, what I show in the table below is the percentage of the International portion held by the fund.
Stock
TEQT: TPE %
XEQT: XEF/XEC %
ZEQT: ZEA/IEFA/ZEM/EEM%
VEQT: VIU/VEE%
Taiwan Semi
0
1.73
5.88
4.19
ASML
1.98
1.43
2.11
1.59
SAP
1.43
1.03
1.37
1.14
Nestle
1.30
0.93
1.24
0.96
Roche
1.24
0.87
1.12
0.95
Novartis
1.24
0.90
1.17
0.98
AstraZeneca
1.24
0.93
1.26
0.94
HSBC
1.15
0.83
1.22
1.02
Shell
1.11
0.80
1.09
0.87
Toyota
1.06
0.70
0.97
0.85
Siemens
1.02
0.77
1.08
0.82
Tencent
0
0.80
2.75
2.10
Samsung
0
0.37
2.03
1.16
Alibaba
0
0.40
1.87
1.59
# held
893
5626
3864
3524
Top 10 %
12.77
10.25
20.89
15.68
Top International Equity Holdings for TEQT, XEQT, ZEQT3, VEQT per ETF factsheets, October 2025
Here you see some pretty significant differences. BMO and Vanguard (especially BMO’s ZEQT) have a much heavier emphasis on “emerging” markets than XEQT does; TD’s TEQT has NO exposure to emerging markets at all.
That’s an interesting strategic choice being made here. Let’s compare emerging market performance to mature international markets. We cand do that by looking at IEFA (mature markets) versus EEM (emerging markets)4:
Emerging markets have been a serious lag to global performance, so perhaps TD is on to something here. I played with this chart quite a bit and it’s only very lately (last 2 years or so) that emerging markets have outperformed the established ones. Long term trend? ZEQT certainly hopes so.
So on the international front, you have choices
TEQT only focuses on mature markets
XEQT allows some (not much) exposure to emerging markets
ZEQT and VEQT make much bigger bets on emerging markets
Which is the correct call? TEQT historically has made the right choice, but as the old adage goes “past performance does not guarantee future results” (or something like that).
I’m using the all-equity versions of these to make the comparison more apples-to-apples. VEQT has a larger Canadian percentage (30%) than the other 3 (25%), so I muliplied VEQT’s holdings by 25/30 to make the comparison meaningful. ↩︎
In this analysis, I’m not making a distinction between “mature” and “emerging” markets. Some of the funds do. In all cases, “International” means “no US, no Canada”. ↩︎
As a dedicated low-fee ETF investor (new to ETFs? read more here), most of my holdings are actually tied up in various index funds; as of right now about 26% of my retirement savings are tied up in the S&P 5001 (largely by holding AOA and XGRO, two of my ETF all-stars), and another 11% are tied up in the S&P/TSX capped composite2 (a lot of which is due to holding XGRO)3.
Beyond making sure I keep my asset allocations in line (read more about that concept here), there’s not much to do. But this doesn’t mean that what I ultimately hold isn’t always changing!
I was reminded of that fact when I noted the latest announcements from S&P, who on a quarterly basis, rejig their indices to add new stocks and drop others. It’s not something I’ve typically paid any attention to, but I share it with you because I found it interesting.
Newly added: AppLovin seems to deal in the world of online advertising, Robinhood is a notorious4 online broker, and Emcor looks to be a construction company.
Newly booted: Marketaxess sells a platform to financial services companies, Caesars operates casinos, and Enphase is a solar energy product company5.
There’s another 6% in the S&P/TSX60 index, which are the 60 largest Canadian firms. The 10 year return of these two indicies is nearly identical — 7.98% for the capped, 8.06% for the TSX 60. You can read about the capped composite here. ↩︎
You may wonder where the rest of holdings are. There’s 15% in various bond indices, 5% in cash, and the rest are in an assortment of international indices (largest are MSCI World ex-US at 10% and MSCI EAFE IMI at around 5%) and lesser-known US/Canadian indicies (like FTSE all-cap Canada or S&P total market US). In the Canada/US case, I’m rather certain that an all-cap index has a very high correlation with the large-cap indices; I could have bundled it all together I suppose. ↩︎
GlobalX just announced that their Canadian Equity fund CNDX will rebate the management fee for the rest of the year. Up until now, I couldn’t recommend this ETF since prior to this news, its MER was a relatively stratospheric 0.13%1. But 0% is a MER I can live with!
They also have a bunch of their segment ETFs doing the same thing, but I don’t do segment bets. Just asset classes.
I don’t currently own any of this ETF.
Compare Vanguard’s VCE or BlackRock XIC at 1/3 the price. Ok, not letter for letter the same thing, but c’mon… ↩︎
The Money Engineer 