Pass on this ETF

Article Excerpt

One of the main attractions of exchange-traded funds is their lower fees compared to mutual funds. In the large and highly competitive U.S. ETF market, fees have declined rapidly to the extent that some “plain vanilla” funds that simply track the major indexes charge 0.05% or less. That amounts to an annual cost of just $5 (or less) for every $1,000 invested. Canadian ETF managers have also followed the U.S. trend, although their fees are generally higher than in the U.S., Canadian investors should remain vigilant to avoid ETFs that are the same in all material respects except for their higher MERs. RBC Global Technology ETF $33.55 (CBOE symbol RTEC) invests in major technology companies. Most of the ETF’s assets are held in U.S. companies (84%) with small portions allocated to European and Japanese firms. Top holdings include Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Broadcom. The ETF, launched in March 2003, holds $1.2 billion of assets and charges an MER of 2.10%. As an alternative, investors should…