“Fractional Shares” allow you to buy less than a single share of the stock or ETF that supports it. Fractional shares ensure that every last penny of cash in your account is actively invested, which, in my view, is a Good Thing. Non-interest earning cash isn’t helping you meet your retirement goals.
Questrade currently holds the majority of my retirement savings, mostly because they were offering free money last year to move accounts over to them1.
They provided support for fractional US ETFs over a year ago, to great fanfare, with Canadian ETFs “coming soon”. It would appear that “soon” is “now”. There’s no way to see which Canadian ETFs have support for fractional trading in any sort of list, but here’s the status of the Canadian ETFs on my magnificent seven ETFs list2, which you can see if you ask for a quote of any symbol you’re interested in.
I’ve tested it out, and the one flaw I’ve found is that you cannot enter a dollar amount for a trade when using the Edge Web version of the Questrade platform. You’re free to do the math yourself and enter a decimal number of shares when using Edge Web4.
Wealthsimple also offers fractional ETFs, and there I have found no restrictions. Questrade is catching up, but still behind Wealthsimple in this regard.
And if you are considering Questrade yourself, you can earn a bit of free money if you use my referral code: 755609544498867 ↩︎
These are the ETFs that make up the lion’s share of my retirement portfolio. ↩︎
Fractional VFV is particularly valuable since its unit cost is north of $100. ↩︎
Which you are forced to do if you want to make trades on accounts for which you are the authorized trader. ↩︎
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 June 30 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). But the observant reader will start to see some changes from last month as my strategy to Kick USD out of my retirement portfolio starts to take effect. The contributions of AOA and ICSH (both USD funds) to my retirement portfolio are notably down and SCHF has disappeared entirely — SCHF was the last bit of USD in my non-registered accounts. ZMMK, XGRO and VCN, on the other hand, have gained in importance to make up for the USD-denominated departures. And ZST (ultra short-term bond fund) and VFV (S&P 500 US Index fund) have begun to make an appearance; you’ll see more of these funds in future months. My ETF all-stars post has been updated accordingly.
Plan for the next month
The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.
The moves I made to start reducing USD in my portfolio have quickly allowed me to get to my recently revised 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
With the asset class splits under control, next month will see more moves to get rid of USD in my portfolio. There’s only USD in my RRIF accounts now, all invested in AOA and ICSH. These positions will be reduced by 1/6th in July as my target is to be fully USD free by the end of the year.
My timing for starting the conversion looks to have been pretty decent; the USD/CAD rate moved significantly in my favour this month. I don’t expect that to last!
Overall
Part of using VPW1 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.
Variable Percentage Withdrawal, my chosen decumulation strategy. ↩︎
This Friday (June 12, 2026) SpaceX (which, as it turns out, doesn’t just make rockets — it also encompasses Starlink and Twitter — er, X) will launch its mega-IPO. It’s expected to immediately become a top 10 company in terms of market capitalization, putting it in the same stratosphere as Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft.
There’s a lot of chatter over how (and even if) this will impact the boring old index investor. It might help to review what the major US Indices are. The major US indices1 that show up again and again in ETFs are
S&P 500 — this is the index used by ETFs like VFV, XSP, ZSP and HXS
CRSP US Total Market Index — VUN, VUS and VEQT for example
The ETFs that track indices don’t have discretion over when or if to include a stock in their ETF. When the index changes, so does the ETF. It’s totally mechanical. The indices also have published rules on how and when to include stocks, but because SpaceX is anticipated to be so exceptionally large, there was pressure on the index providers to tweak their rules to make sure SpaceX was included. If you’re keeping score, only Nasdaq made changes to accommodate SpaceX. S&P did not.
After much anticipation, here’s the state of play as of June 9, 2026:
Many of the indices use the float-adjusted amounts; this means a lower weighting for SpaceX than its full market-cap, which means a lower weight in any index that uses float. In the coming months, I’ll take a peek at how much SpaceX I hold, and how it’s changing, just for my own education.
So, for me, it looks like I’ll be owning some SpaceX in the not-too-distant future since the vast majority of my US holdings are in XEQT/XGRO/AOA. And, the odds are, it will lose value post IPO. That kinda sucks.
Of course, as BMO correctly points out, nobody will be immune from this kind of market movement — why, you may ask? Given SpaceX is going to be included in the popular Nasdaq 100, funds that mirror this index are going to have to make room for the new arrival, selling off shares of things they already hold, like Nvidia, and Microsoft. This will create downward pressure on the prices of these tech stocks, and hence it will also create downward pressure on any ETF that also holds Nvidia, and Microsoft. The S&P 500 holds many of the Nasdaq 100 companies, so you can expect some price erosion of ETFs mirroring the S&P indices as the Nasdaq ETFs do their rebalancing act.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think I really care. I don’t love SpaceX, or any other stock for that matter. The S&P indices have historically rewarded the patient investor, and I see no reason to change my strategy based on one IPO, no matter how splashy. It won’t be the last — both Anthropic and OpenAI are probably close behind with their IPOs.
The small cap Russell 2000 is also popular, but I don’t mention it in the main list since SpaceX is too big to be a small cap ↩︎
This is a CAD ETF and holds things beyond “just” the S&P index. See more here. ↩︎
This is a USD ETF, and holds things beyond just the S&P index. See more here. ↩︎
The most famous Nasdaq 100 ETF trades in USD and is QQQ. This would explain the not-very-original names chosen by the Canadian management companies. ↩︎
I think only TD uses this one, but since I’ve written about TEQT in the past, I figured I’d include it. ↩︎
and likely longer, since there is a profitability screen imposed as well for inclusion in the S&P 500 ↩︎
Over time, the size of the SpaceX float is expected to increase as insiders unload their shares; the timing of this is not known. I’d expect the SpaceX % to increase over the first year of inclusion on the S&P Total index. ↩︎
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.
“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.
US 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.
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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
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.
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.
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. ↩︎
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% ↩︎
Variable Percentage Withdrawal, my chosen decumulation strategy. ↩︎
