Vanguard Canada launches its first actively managed domestic Fixed Income ETF

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Vanguard Canada opens Toronto Stock Exchange on Sept. 9, 2026. Photo courtesy TMX Group.

Yesterday, Vanguard Investments Canada Inc. announced the launch of what it says is its first actively managed fixed-income ETF: the Vanguard Global Core-Plus Bond ETF (TSX: VCOR). VCOR began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday (Sept.9, 2026), where Vanguard opened trading for the day (as shown on left.)

The new ETF was a major focus of one of two major presentations at Vanguard Canada’s annual Global Insights Forum, held in Toronto at the Royal York Hotel. The other was billed as Megatrends, AI and Market Implications.

In a press release, Vanguard Capital Management CIO and Global Head of Vanguard Fixed Income Group Sara Devereux described VCOR as being part of the firm’s push to make Vanguard’s specialized fixed-income capabilities accessible to more investors. She said it “combines the resources of our global investment platform, a disciplined active process, and broad diversification across fixed-income markets in a single ETF.”

It aims to provide investors and their financial advisors with an “actively managed, single-ticket fixed-income solution at a low management fee of 0.25%.” While the “core” allocation is to investment-grade bonds, it also invests in global rates, credit, and securitized markets,  along with a “plus” component that allocates to higher-yielding bonds.  Depending on markets, investors can expect allocations of between 20% and 50% for investment-grade credit; 0 to 20% U.S. treasuries/agency; 10 to 35% mortgages; 5 to 20% Emerging Markets debt and 0 to 20% high-yield corporates. The fund seeks to hedge its U.S.-dollar currency exposure back to the Canadian dollar and plans to pay monthly distributions.

Sal D’Angelo, Head of Vanguard Canada, said active ETFs have experienced significant growth in Canada and now account for roughly a third of Canadian ETF assets: “We continue to see strong advisor and investor demand for active global fixed-income solutions that offer broader diversification and access to a wider opportunity set.”

Bonds becoming more important for financial advisors as well as their clients

Dan Shaykevich/Linkedin

At the Forum on Wednesday, the new ETF was the focus of a presentation by Vanguard principal and senior portfolio manager Dan Shaykevich (pictured on right). Fixed income is once again playing a central role in investor portfolios, he said. As Canadian financial advisors prepare for CRM3 (Client Relationship Model Phase 3), it will also play a more important role for advisors too. The fund taps one of the world’s largest Fixed-Income money managers: Vanguard’s global fixed income team manages US4.2 trillion in assets under management, including C$30 billion in Canadian Bonds.  It’s supported by more than 20 portfolio managers, 35 traders, 50 credit researchers and at least eight quantitative analysts.

Generally speaking, financial advisors tend to spend more time with clients on equities than on Fixed Income, Shaykevich said, “even though Fixed Income may be 20 to 40%” of advisors’ money under management.

Marketing materials distributed at the event included an insert on Fixed Income Investing reminding investors that bonds can complement the growth potential of equities by providing stability, generating income and supporing diversification.

The insert lists several already existing Canadian Index-based Fixed Income ETFs. They include: Continue Reading…

Before you Decide: Should I own Individual Stocks?

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Image created with ChatGPT by Lowrie Financial

 

By Steve Lowrie, CFA

Special to Financial Independence Hub

The first investment I ever made was an individual stock. At that time, there were no apps or online accounts available to make this purchase. Instead, I walked into a local brokerage office, opened an account in person, sat across a desk from a stockbroker and asked him to place the trade. By the time I received the confirmation slip in the mail, roughly half of my money was gone.

What stays with me is not the loss. It is that nobody asked me anything. Nobody asked why I believed that company would do well, what would happen to my plans if I were wrong, or how much of my savings I was prepared to put behind a single idea. The order was placed, the confirmation arrived in the mail, and that was the whole of the advice. I am not certain I would have welcomed those questions at the time, since I was young and overconfident, but I have thought about them for more than thirty years and I have asked many people those same questions.

The reason they still matter is that the conversation itself has never changed. It is hard to get through a dinner or a business event without someone describing a stock they bought years ago that has gone up substantially, and what we rarely hear about is all the other stocks they bought that went nowhere. That is not because anyone is being dishonest. It is simply how memory works. We keep our winners close, we enjoy talking about them, and the disappointments quietly fall out of the story.

The stock name changes. The story never does.

There are good reasons to own stocks. Over long periods they have been one of the most effective ways to grow wealth and protect purchasing power from inflation. So the more interesting question is not whether to own stocks, but how to own them. Should you try to identify a handful of winning companies, or own a broadly diversified pool of them through mutual funds or ETFs? After more than three decades of watching Canadian families succeed and fail at this, my answer is direct: for almost every investor, there is no financial planning reason to own individual stocks. I am not saying you should never own an individual stock. I am saying the decision deserves a good reason. In my experience, most investors have never been asked to supply one.

Why is Picking Winning Individual Stocks so Difficult?

The challenge is not recognizing great companies after they have succeeded. It is identifying them beforehand, when their future is still uncertain and their share price already reflects everything millions of other investors know and expect.

Research by Arizona State University professor Hendrik Bessembinder shows just how difficult that is. In Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? published in the Journal of Financial Economics, he examined the lifetime returns of every U.S. common stock since 1926 and found that the best-performing 4 per cent of listed companies accounted for the entire net wealth creation of the U.S. market above one-month Treasury bills. Slightly more than four out of every seven individual stocks did not even match the return of a Treasury bill over their lifetimes. That deserves a second read, because it means most individual stocks are not merely disappointing. Most individual stocks did worse than holding cash. Nor is this only an American phenomenon. Bessembinder and his co-authors extended the work to more than 64,000 companies worldwide and found the same pattern outside the United States.

The point is not that the stock market is a bad place to be. Over the long run it has rewarded investors generously. The point is that the reward has been concentrated in remarkably few places, which changes what you are actually attempting when you buy a handful of companies. You are not making a modest bet with slightly unfavourable odds. You are trying to locate a very small number of names inside a very large field, in advance, with a share price that already reflects everyone else’s best guess. Bessembinder tested exactly that by simulating single-stock selection repeatedly, and the single-stock strategy underperformed the broad market in 96 per cent of those simulations.

So why does anyone keep doing it? Because nothing ever tells them to stop.

You do not have to lose money for stock picking to fail. You only have to earn less than you would have earned by owning the broad market. An investor can make money every single year, comfortably ahead of any fixed-income alternative, and still be quietly falling behind the entire time. The statements look fine. There is no line item for the return you did not earn, no alert when the gap widens, and nothing that ever prompts a review. It is the most expensive kind of loss precisely because it never announces itself.

A broadly diversified portfolio removes the guessing. You will own plenty of disappointing companies along the way, but you will also own the small number of extraordinary ones, because you own all of them.

If an Individual Stock I bought went up, does that mean it was a Good Decision?

Not on its own, and this is where the first article in this series does the most work. There I made the case that a good decision can produce a bad outcome and a bad decision can produce a good one, and I offered a test for telling skill from luck: could you lose on purpose? In a game of skill you can deliberately play badly and reliably lose. In a game of chance you cannot.

Apply that test to stock picking. If you set out tomorrow to deliberately choose the worst-performing stocks in the market, could you reliably do it? Almost nobody can, and that tells you a great deal about how much skill is actually available in the activity. The answer is the same whether your last pick went up or down. So if you put a significant portion of your portfolio into one company and watched it appreciate, you may well have seen something other investors missed, or you may equally have taken a risk you did not need to take and been lucky enough to have it work out. The return by itself cannot tell you which one happened.

This matters because success changes behaviour. A winning stock reinforces our belief that we have some ability to spot winners, and once we believe that, there is no reason to change what appears to be working. I have watched that sequence more times than I can count, and it almost always runs in the same direction. The winner is rarely the last decision. It is the decision that funds the next, bigger one.

Am I taking a Risk I do not need to take?

Concentrating wealth in a few companies introduces company-specific risk, which we call uncompensated risk in investment jargon. In plain English, it is a risk that can largely be diversified away, so there is no reliable reason to expect a higher return simply for bearing it.

Concentrated portfolios can certainly outperform diversified ones, sometimes by a great deal, and that has never been in dispute. The question I would ask is a different one: do you need to take that chance to get where you are going? If a diversified portfolio already gives you a reasonable probability of accomplishing your goals, then any additional risk that could jeopardize them should clear a very high bar. In my experience, very few of them do.

Is a Canadian Portfolio as Diversified as it looks?

There is a second concentration problem that most Canadian investors never notice, and it sits underneath the first one. The Canadian market is not a balanced market. It is dominated by financial services, meaning the large banks and insurers, and by resources. Rocks and trees, as it is often described. Entire sectors that make up a large share of global markets, including technology, health care and consumer businesses, are only lightly represented here. So a portfolio invested entirely in a Canadian index is already a concentrated bet, even though it holds hundreds of companies and carries the word diversified on the label. Continue Reading…

Gold or Silver? How to prepare for what comes next

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By Andrew Sleigh, Sprott Money

Special to Financial Independence Hub

When people ask me whether they should start with gold or silver, my answer depends largely on where they are financially. If you’re dealing with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, you’re generally going to come in heavily with gold, although I still think you need silver.

For the average Canadian or American with less than one or two million dollars in assets, I would establish a position in silver coins first and then supplement that with gold. There’s no perfect percentage. You can fine-tune your gold and silver allocation as you become more educated and understand what each metal is supposed to accomplish. The important thing is building the position before everybody suddenly decides they want physical precious metals at the same time.
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Why I would Start with Silver Coins

People ask why I recommend silver coins instead of 100-ounce silver bars, especially when bars can have lower premiums. My answer is transactability. If all you own are large bars, how are you going to handle smaller transactions if silver ever needs to function as money? I made this mistake myself. When I started buying physical silver, I bought seven 100-ounce bars. I knew I wanted physical metal, but I didn’t yet understand which products made the most sense. After listening to people who had been stacking for decades, I exchanged those bars for coins.

My basic approach for somebody starting today would be:

  • Establish a position in recognizable silver coins first.
  • Add physical gold as the overall position becomes larger.
  • Move into 10-ounce or 100-ounce silver bars after you’ve accumulated enough coins.
  • Don’t concentrate everything into denominations that could be difficult to transact with. The objective isn’t simply getting the most ounces for the lowest premium. It’s owning precious metals in forms that could actually be useful when you need them.

Not every Ounce of Silver is Equal in the Real World

I used to believe an ounce was an ounce and bought whichever silver product was cheapest. Then I realized it’s not only about what I understand about silver. It’s about what the person on the other side of the transaction understands. I’ve encountered people who were only comfortable with Canadian Silver Maple Leafs because they recognized and trusted them. An experienced precious metals owner may happily accept a generic one-ounce round, while somebody less familiar with silver may want a Maple or, in the United States, a Silver Eagle.

That’s why I want a mixture that gives me options:

• Recognizable sovereign silver coins for people who want something familiar.
• Generic rounds for people who understand silver and simply care about weight and purity.
• Larger bars only after I’ve established enough smaller denominations. If precious metals ever become more commonly used for barter, recognizability could become almost as important as the silver itself.
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Why I’m concerned about the Financial System

I see substantial risk in the conventional financial system, particularly in currencies and long-duration bonds. As interest rates rise, older bonds paying much lower yields become less attractive and can lose significant market value if they need to be sold. At the same time, governments across the West continue running enormous fiscal deficits. Canada has this problem, the United States has it, and Europe has it. To me, we’re watching currencies compete in a race to the bottom.

When gold and silver rise in dollar terms, I don’t necessarily look at that as the metals suddenly becoming more valuable. I also look at what is happening to the currency they’re measured in. You can see declining purchasing power every time you go grocery shopping. If governments continue expanding deficits and pursuing inflationary policies, I believe protecting purchasing power becomes increasingly important. That’s a major reason I want physical gold and silver rather than relying entirely on paper assets and currency.
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Why Silver Demand could become Enormous

Silver is particularly interesting because it has both monetary and industrial demand. There are already numerous industries competing for physical silver, including

• Electrification and renewable energy.
• Electronics and advanced technology.
• Automation and robotics.
• Global manufacturing.
• Defense and military applications.

Then you add investors who want physical metal because they’re increasingly concerned about the financial system. It doesn’t take the entire population buying silver to create shortages. If even a relatively small additional percentage of people suddenly wants physical bullion, retail inventories can tighten very quickly. We’ve already experienced periods when dealers struggled to source products such as Silver Maples and 100-ounce bars. The public tends to assume they’ll always be able to buy physical metal whenever they decide they need it. I don’t make that assumption. I’d rather accumulate gradually while it’s readily available.
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Physical Metal isn’t a Short-term Trade for me

If your objective is trading gold and silver price movements, physical bullion probably isn’t the most efficient vehicle. Premiums and spreads can eat into short-term trades. That’s not why I own physical metal. For me, physical gold and silver are first and foremost about wealth preservation.

I think people need to separate two completely different objectives:

• Trading precious metals: Trying to profit from short-term movements in gold and silver prices.
• Owning physical precious metals: Protecting purchasing power and keeping tangible wealth under your control.
If silver substantially outperforms and you sell everything to lock your gains back into dollars, you’ve put yourself back into the currency you were trying to protect yourself from. Physical metal gives me wealth already in my possession or under my control. I don’t have to sell a financial product, receive currency, and then hope I can convert that currency into something tangible during a crisis.
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Gold and Silver still have Monetary Value

I’ve talked to people who have already used precious metals for barter in private transactions. I once asked a gentleman shining my shoes at the Toronto airport whether he would accept silver as payment. He immediately said yes. One silver coin represented too much value for the shoe shine, but the point was that he recognized the value and was willing to accept it.

You’re probably not walking into a major grocery chain today and paying for groceries with Silver Maples. But that doesn’t mean precious metals have lost their monetary characteristics. If confidence in conventional currencies or payment systems deteriorates significantly, I think recognizable gold and silver could play a much larger role in private transactions. That’s another reason I want smaller-denomination silver rather than having everything concentrated in large bars.
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How I would prepare with Gold and Silver today

Physical precious metals aren’t completely risk-free. Prices fluctuate, premiums matter, and bullion needs to be stored securely. That’s why I believe in nibbling away rather than trying to perfectly time one enormous purchase.
If I were building a position today, my priorities would be:

• Build a foundation of recognizable physical silver coins.
• Gradually add gold as the amount of wealth being protected increases.
• Add larger silver bars once enough smaller denominations are already owned.
• Keep some physical cash available for immediate expenses.
• Think carefully about secure storage.
• Don’t advertise what you own or where you keep it.

I’m not trying to perfectly trade every move in gold and silver. I’m trying to preserve purchasing power and maintain tangible wealth under my control. Financial problems can develop inch by inch and then seemingly happen all at once. I’d rather prepare incrementally while gold and silver are available than wait until everybody else reaches the same conclusion at the same time.

Andrew Sleigh is a Sales Representative at Sprott Money with over 32 years of financial industry experience. After beginning his career as an insurance broker in 1991, he became an independent financial broker, providing financial planning, investment, insurance, and benefit solutions. In 2017, Andrew shifted his focus to bullion and precious metals, helping individuals and businesses understand how hard assets can play a role in wealth preservation.

Time for Core (Plus) Bond Portfolios Again?

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By Christy Tan and Lukasz Labedzki, Franklin Templeton Institute

(Sponsor Blog) 

Investment Implications

We see growing evidence suggesting that investors should consider moving from a short-duration bias toward core (plus) bond portfolios. This is largely predicated on the fact that valuations have become more attractive across fixed-income sectors, with all-in yields approaching compelling levels. Our guidepost remains 10-year Treasury yields near the upper end of their recent range. We continue to believe that this is a market for an active, selective approach.

Please see our sector views below.

Central banks: We have a new Federal Reserve (Fed) chair, and if we take him at his word, it feels
like a new environment has begun. The rhetoric is hawkish, reinforcing that the 2% inflation target is
by no means soft. Importantly, there’s also a strong push for no forward guidance, with the market
invited to react to incoming data as it sees fit. That likely means a higher-volatility environment and,
all else equal, a higher risk premium demanded by bond investors. As a result, all eyes are now on
the data. If the data fails to confirm moderating inflation, the market will demand Fed action. If the
data does confirm it, the market can justify a pause. In both cases, longer duration can perform
well. The risk is the Fed policymakers talking but not acting when needed: that would make the
bond market angry. We see the risk-reward of extending duration as improving and are happy to do
so at certain yield levels.

US Treasuries: Our view is that 10-year Treasury yields will remain broadly range-bound, which
means the closer they get to 4.75%, the more attractive it becomes to move into intermediate
duration. We believe it is reasonable to begin extending duration around those yield levels.

Developed markets credit: Historically elevated investment-grade bond issuance that the market
needed to absorb widened spreads from their tights to levels closer to fair value, while the broader
fundamental backdrop remains healthy. Supply should also slow in the second half of the year. In
the high-yield space, spreads have also widened somewhat. We remain biased toward higher-rated
issuers in high yield. All-in yields are attractive and provide resilience across a range of scenarios.

Emerging market (EM) debt: While it has been the best-performing fixed-income sector
year-to- date, we think it’s time to be more selective. In local-currency EM debt, Latin America
has been the top performer (as we highlighted), and we expect this to continue. As a stronger US
dollar remains a risk, in our view allocations should be balanced with US dollar-denominated EM
debt, which is less sensitive to currency moves.

Euro bonds: As mentioned previously, we believe German Bund yields (Europe’s benchmark
government bond yields) will remain broadly range-bound. They closely track expected mone-
tary policy, which has recently been driven largely by gas prices. With Bund yields above 3.1%, we
find them attractive for medium-term investors. Hedged yields for US dollar-based investors are
on par with US Treasuries, meaning there is little opportunity cost to global diversification.

Performance Snapshot

Global fixed-income performance has remained largely uninspiring this year, with the Bloomberg
Global Aggregate Index still slightly underwater. Relative performance has been stronger in
emerging market debt, particularly US dollar-denominated debt. The picture is more nuanced in
local-currency EM debt, which we discuss later. US high yield has also outperformed. Within
higher-quality fixed income, US short-duration strategies have also held up relatively well. These
are essentially the sectors we have been highlighting throughout the year.


US Treasuries

We believe benchmark 10-year Treasury yields will remain broadly range-bound, and investors should take advantage when yields are close to the upper end of that range (~4.75%). Recent history (Exhibit 2) suggests this strategy has worked well and remains our playbook for the second half of 2026.


Of course, yields could move higher, but at these levels we view the risk-reward as favorable and do not see a high risk of yields moving significantly above the recent range over the coming months. The main reason is that a lot is already priced in: the market expects more than two Fed hikes over the next 12 months,1 while the current term premium (the risk premium in bond jargon) is close to 70 basis points (bps),2 versus a recent high of around 90 bps. A meaningful move above 5% in 10-year Treasury yields would likely require a further significant repricing of both monetary policy expectations and the term premium.

The major risk is that the Fed turns more hawkish than in our base case. We acknowledge this risk, but we also think that realized hikes could, in fact, cause longer-duration bonds to catch a bid, as they would demonstrate a strong commitment to fighting inflation and could lead to a repricing of growth expectations.

For conservative mandates, we continue to view short-duration bonds as a portfolio pillar. They are highly resilient across scenarios: two-year Treasury yields would need to rise above 9% before investors started losing money, assuming a one-year investment horizon (Exhibit 3).

Developed Markets Credit

The major story in credit markets lately has been investment-grade (IG) bond supply, driven in part by hyperscaler borrowing. More than US$1.2 trillion3 of IG issuance came to market through the first six months of the year: well above historical norms (Exhibit 4). Continue Reading…

Canadian Kids picking up on their Parents’ Money Stress, new Vanguard Survey finds

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Even when parents try to shield their children from financial worries, a new study suggests kids are hearing more than parents realize.

As the cost of living continues to squeeze Canadian households, a new survey from Vanguard Canada suggests the strain isn’t confined to parents’ bank accounts; it’s also shaping how their children think and feel about money too.

The survey of just over 1,000 Canadian parents of children under 18 found that households that talk openly about money raise more financially literate kids, while households that avoid the subject may be doing more harm than good.

The Instinct to Protect backfires

Many parents try to keep financial stress away from their kids. Among parents who describe themselves as financially stressed, more than two thirds said they feel pressure to hide their worries from their children, and roughly a third said they avoid discussing money at home altogether.

But the survey suggests that instinct doesn’t work the way parents hope. Seven in ten financially stressed parents said their children overhear money conversations anyway. In fact, those children were found to be nearly five times more likely to feel anxious about money than their peers.

Sal D’Angelo, Head of Vanguard Investments Canada, said children pick up on far more than parents assume, even when adults try to keep financial matters private. He framed early financial education as key to helping the next generation build healthy money habits.

 A Literacy Gap that starts early and closes late

The survey also points to a timing problem. Households where money is discussed regularly produce children with markedly stronger grasp of core concepts like banking, debit and credit, which is nearly three times higher comprehension according to the findings.

Yet the majority of parents said substantive money conversations don’t begin until their child is between 15 and 18 years old, well after attitudes toward money have already started to form. Continue Reading…