If you want a sense of the global importance of U.S. stocks, take a look at how asset allocation ETFs are built.
These exchange-traded funds offer a fully diversified portfolio in a single package – bonds and stocks from Canada, the United States and international markets. In almost all of the asset allocation ETFs included in this final edition of the 2025 Globe and Mail ETF Buyer’s Guide, U.S. securities get a bigger weighting than those from Canada and elsewhere.
Asset allocation ETFs reflect financial industry thinking on the best way to structure portfolios for conservative, balanced, growth and aggressive investors. The consensus is that the U.S. market rules, even for people who live and invest in Canada.
You have to buy into that line of thinking if you hold the asset allocation ETFs featured in this guide, but there’s an upside. With asset allocation ETFs, you simply have to pick one suited to your needs and keep adding money. Cheap to own and rigidly diversified, asset allocation ETFs are one-stop shopping for long-term investing success.
The funds in the guide are aimed at balanced and growth investors, which means target asset mixes of 60 per cent stocks and 40 per cent bonds in the balanced category and an 80-20 mix for growth. You can also buy all-stock funds, but they don’t qualify as a one-and-only investment for most people. Likewise, conservative asset allocation ETFs are for a niche crowd preferring more bonds than stocks.
Each fund featured here holds a portfolio of ETFs from the same corporate family. The posted MER is all-inclusive – you don’t pay additional fees for the underlying holdings.
Here’s a discussion of terms used in this edition of the ETF Buyer’s Guide:
Assets: Shown to give you a sense of how interested other investors are in a fund.
Management expense ratio: The MER is the main cost of owning an ETF on a continuing basis; published returns are shown on an after-fee basis.
Trading expense ratio: The TER is the cost of trading commissions racked up by the managers of an ETF as they make adjustments to the portfolio of investments; add the TER to the MER for a full picture of a fund’s cost.
Distribution frequency: Noted for investors who want regular income from dividends and bond interest. Some funds are more suited to this purpose than others.
Geographical weightings: Tells you how much of the stocks and bonds in the portfolio are held in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. Japan is typically the third most heavily weighted country.
Returns: Annualized total returns are shown for periods of one, three and five years. Total return means price changes plus dividends and bond interest. Year-to-date returns are shown to indicate how well a fund managed the financial market turbulence of early 2025.
Download the source excel here.
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