Six North American ETFs—5 buys, 1 sell

Article Excerpt

These six ETFs hold mostly blue chip, widely traded stocks on Canadian and U.S. exchanges. All of them mirror, or track, the performance of major stock market indexes. That’s opposed to narrower indexes focused on, say, resources or themes such as solar power or biotech. Of course, you pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell these ETFs. But their low management fees give them a cost advantage over most mutual funds. Below we update our advice on all six—five buys and one we don’t recommend. ISHARES S&P/TSX 60 INDEX ETF $21.33 (Toronto symbol XIU; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) is a good low-fee way to buy the top stocks on the TSX. The units are made up of stocks that represent the S&P/TSX 60 Index—the 60 largest, most heavily traded stocks on the exchange. The ETF began trading on September 28, 1999. Expenses are just 0.18% of assets, and it yields 2.8%. The index mostly consists of high-quality companies…