All posts by Financial Independence Hub

IMAX: A World of Opportunity for International Equity ETFs

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Image source: Hamilton ETFs

By Hamilton ETFs

(Sponsor Blog)

International equities continue to be in focus. As global market leadership broadens, Canadian investors are paying closer attention to geographic diversification and opportunities beyond North America. International stocks, which outperformed the U.S. stock market in 2025, have continued to attract attention as the geopolitical landscape evolves.

So far this year, Canadians have poured $22.8 billion into international equity ETFs, according to National Bank of Canada Capital Markets[1]. In contrast, they directed just $13.4 billion to Canadian equity funds and $11.3 billion to U.S. equity funds, over the same period.

Recent market performance has helped reinforce this trend. Since December 31, 2024, the MSCI EAFE Index rallied 40.5% compared to 24.6% for the S&P 500[2].

This combination of improved relative performance and more attractive valuations has helped bring international equities back into focus for investors looking to broaden exposure beyond North America. This shift has also been reflected in market commentary. Yardeni Research began recommending a “Go Global” approach in December 2025, after more than a decade of favouring a “Stay Home” allocation. “So far this year, the U.S. has been among the laggards in the global performance derby,” he wrote in a research note published April 27, 2026.

Canadian investors have plenty of options for accessing international equity exposure. Yet for those seeking attractive, tax-efficient monthly income from developed markets outside North America, the available solutions have been far more limited. That’s why we’re closing that gap with the Hamilton International Equity YIELD MAXIMIZER™ ETF (IMAX).

Introducing IMAX

IMAX is designed for investors seeking diversified international equity exposure paired with attractive, tax-efficient monthly income. To achieve this, IMAX holds ETFs that provide exposure to both the MSCI EAFE Index and MSCI EAFE IMI Index and overlays a covered call strategy on a portion of the portfolio. The MSCI EAFE Index captures developed markets outside the U.S. and Canada.

International and global covered call ETFs remain relatively limited in Canada. The few available strategies often have significant geographic concentrations, such as Europe or the U.S., or provide exposure to a narrower group of companies through concentrated portfolios. By contrast, IMAX offers broad developed market exposure specifically outside North America. Through this approach, investors gain exposure to more than 2,500 large-, mid- and small-cap equities across markets including Japan, Britain, Switzerland, France, Germany and Australia.

To help generate monthly income, IMAX employs an actively managed covered call strategy overseen by our experienced options team. Like the other ETFs in our YIELD MAXIMIZER™ suite, IMAX utilizes an income first approach that primarily writes at-the-money call options in an effort to generate higher option premiums to provide enhanced cash flow potential. The strategy also maintains a flexible coverage ratio, allowing the portfolio management team to balance monthly income generation with long-term capital appreciation potential.

Importantly, IMAX helps provide tax efficient income, as options premiums are generally taxed as capital gains and/or return of capital.

Going Global with IMAX

Diversification is one of the most important principles of portfolio construction, and it applies not only across asset classes (stocks, bonds, commodities etc.), sectors and market capitalizations, but also regions. Continue Reading…

Small ETF Fees matter more Near Findependence

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By Callum Melville, WealthRadiant.com

Special to Financial Independence Hub

Most Canadian ETF investors already know that fees matter. The harder question is how much attention they deserve.

Early in the Accumulation years, the honest answer is often less than people think. If someone has a $15,000 portfolio and is still building the habit of investing every month, the difference between a 0.06% ETF and a 0.20% ETF is not the main thing deciding their future. Saving rate, asset allocation, behaviour, and simply staying invested usually matter more.

But the math starts to feel different as a portfolio approaches retirement size.

A 0.14 percentage point fee gap sounds tiny. On $25,000, it is about $35 per year before compounding. On $1,000,000, it is about $1,400 per year before compounding. Over a long retirement or semi-retirement period, that difference can become large enough to be worth a second look.

That does not mean every investor should chase the lowest possible MER. It does mean investors near Financial Independence (Findependence) should translate fee percentages into dollars before deciding that a small-looking fee difference is irrelevant.

Why MERs are easy to ignore early on

Management Expense Ratios are strange because investors rarely pay them as a separate bill. The fee is embedded in the fund’s return. You do not log in and see a line item saying, “ETF fee paid today.”

That makes MERs easy to underweight. A 0.20% fee looks almost invisible beside the normal movement of the market. One ordinary trading day can move an equity ETF by more than the annual MER.

For newer investors, this is not always a bad thing. The biggest investing mistakes at the beginning are often behavioural: waiting too long to start, holding too much cash for no clear reason, changing strategy every few months, or building a portfolio that is too complicated to maintain.

If an All-in-One ETF helps someone invest consistently, rebalance automatically, and avoid tinkering, the slightly higher MER can be a reasonable price for simplicity. A cheap portfolio that someone cannot stick with is not really cheap.

Why fees feel different near retirement

Near Findependence, the same fee percentage applies to a much larger base.

Consider a simple example. A 0.20% MER on a $1,000,000 portfolio is roughly $2,000 per year before compounding. A 0.06% MER on the same portfolio is roughly $600 per year. The gap is about $1,400 in the first year.

That is not life-changing by itself, but it is no longer abstract. It might be a month of groceries, a short trip, part of a property tax bill, or simply money that could stay invested.

The compounding effect is what makes the check worth doing. Using a simplified 25-year projection with a 6% gross annual return, a $1,000,000 portfolio at a 0.06% MER grows to about $4.23 million. The same portfolio at a 0.20% MER grows to about $4.09 million. The difference is roughly $138,000 over 25 years.

That example is deliberately simplified. It ignores taxes, trading costs, changing returns, withdrawals, and Asset Allocation differences. Real life will not move in a smooth 6% line. But it shows why a basis-point difference that looked harmless early on can deserve attention once the portfolio is large.

What a recent Canadian ETF fee snapshot showed

I recently reviewed MERs and historical fee anchors for 30 popular Canadian-listed ETFs across Vanguard, iShares, BMO, and Global X. The goal was not to find the “best” ETF. It was to see where fees have compressed, where they remain higher, and where investors may be paying for convenience or product structure.

The broad pattern was clear:

  • Canadian total-market ETFs in the sample were extremely cheap, with VCN, XIC, and ZCN all at 0.06%.
  • S&P 500 index ETFs were also tightly clustered, with VFV, VSP, XSP, and ZSP all around 0.09%.
  • The all-in-one ETF category was more expensive, with the funds in the sample sitting roughly between 0.17% and 0.24%.
  • More specialized products, such as covered-call or sector ETFs, could be meaningfully more expensive.
  • Fee compression has not been even. Some plain index categories already look highly competitive, while other product types still carry a visible cost.

The average MER across the 30 ETFs was 0.178%, with a median of 0.140%. That is already low compared with many traditional retail mutual fund fee levels, but the spread still matters when applied to large portfolios.

For example, an all-in-one ETF charging around 0.20% may be perfectly reasonable for an investor who values simplicity. But compared with a plain Canadian equity ETF at 0.06% or an S&P 500 ETF at 0.09%, the dollar cost of convenience becomes visible as portfolio size grows.

The All-in-One ETF tradeoff

All-in-one ETFs are a good example because the fee conversation can easily become too rigid.

An investor can often build a lower-MER portfolio by holding separate Canadian, U.S., international, and bond ETFs. But the all-in-one fund handles asset allocation, rebalancing, and ongoing maintenance in one product.

That can be valuable. Retirees and near-retirees may not want more moving parts. Some investors do not want to rebalance manually. Others know that if the portfolio becomes too fiddly, they are more likely to second-guess it.

So the right question is not, “Is this ETF the cheapest?” Continue Reading…

Can Millennials become Financially Independent?

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Image Pixabay/iStock

By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Special to Financial Independence Hub

Millennials, those born roughly between 1980 and the year 2000, face a different future than Baby Boomers did at their same age. In terms of Wealth Building and saving for Retirement their challenges are wage stagnation, unemployment, underemployment and a seeming sense of entitlement. Because they came of age during the Great Recession, their faith in brokerage firms, Wall Street and global banks has been bruised.

Being optimists, we believe the financial future of this generation can still be bright, but with loads of student debt and lack of investment understanding they need to get started learning about finances and money management now.

Time is on your side and is your greatest asset

One thing Millennials have today that Boomers don’t is great stretches of time before Retirement. It is their greatest resource and this fact needs to be made clear to them. Time cannot be replaced, and if you are a Millennial, then knowing about the power of compounding will change your financial life. $10,000 – the cost of a used car – invested today in the S&P 500 Index and based on market historical returns from 1950 to March 2023 could grow to US$1,000,000 or more throughout your career, thereby building a solid foundation for your retirement needs. This return is without adding another dollar to your investment.

S&P Market Return Chart

If you do nothing else for your retirement, scrape and scrap to make this investment into SPY (S&P 500 Index ETF) or VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF) and you will be handsomely rewarded, since you have this time on your side.

Just get Started

A new investor with limited funds can utilize an online, no-frills brokerage account and — depending on which brokerage you pick —  you can open an account with less than $1,000. Not every house requires initial investments of more than $2,500, and as of this writing, Fidelity is offering a no minimum for opening an account. Continue Reading…

Dalbar’s Measure of Retail Investor Underperformance

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DALBAR/LinkedIn

By Michael J. Wiener

Special to Financial Independence Hub

Lately, I’ve heard a few references to Dalbar’s measure of how much retail investors underperform the investments they hold due to poor behaviour.  I suspect that if the people making these references understood how Dalbar calculates this measure, they’d be embarrassed at having mentioned it.  There can be legitimate academic debate about the best way to measure investor underperformance, but Dalbar’s simple method is just nonsense.

A simple example to illustrate the problem

Ann has invested in ABC fund for the past 5 years.  Her initial investment was $10,000.  Over the first 4 years, she left her investment alone and it grew 50% to $15,000.  Ann then got an inheritance of $20,000, which she put into ABC fund to give her a total of $35,000.  In the final year, ABC went up 6%.  Ann now has $37,100.

By any reasonable method of analyzing Ann’s investment behaviour, she exactly matched the performance of her fund.  She was always fully invested with the money she had available.  She never held back any funds waiting for a better entry point, and she never withdrew any money anticipating a market decline.

But let’s look at what happens when we apply Dalbar’s calculation method.  Over the 5 years, ABC fund produced a 50% total return over the first 4 years, and a 6% return in the last year.  The total return for the 5 years is then

(1 + .50) * (1 + .06) – 1 = 59%.

The compound average annual return for ABC fund is

(1 + .59) ^ (1/5) – 1 = 9.72%.

Ann invested a total of $30,000 over the 5 years.  Her total return is

$7100 / $30,000 = 23.67%

Her compound average annual return is

(1 + .2367) ^ (1/5) – 1 = 4.34%.

Ann’s annual underperformance is then

9.72% – 4.34% = 5.38%.

Apparently, Ann is a terrible investor.  According to Dalbar, Ann’s poor behaviour was in receiving her inheritance late in the 5-year period.  She should have invested the entire $30,000 5 years ago.  This is nonsense, of course, but that’s how Dalbar’s calculations work.

Telling advisors what they want to hear

To my knowledge, Dalbar doesn’t apply their methods to a single investor in this way.  They look at investors collectively across a set of funds.  However, the same problem illustrated above exists.  During any period of net inflows, investors are blamed for the returns these inflows missed at the beginning of the measurement period.  Investors are blamed for “poor timing” because they didn’t invest the money earlier.  The fact that most of them were unable to invest before they had earned the money is not considered a valid excuse. Continue Reading…

Silver Tsunami: Why the Best Business Transitions involve a Warm Hand

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Image: Unsplash

By Jeff Johnstone, National Bank Financial Wealth Management

Special to Financial Independence Hub

In my world, financial planning is a lot like building a home. You can spend decades refining the interior — growing revenue, managing cash flow, building something you are proud of — but without a strong foundation, the entire structure remains vulnerable.  For the roughly 500,000 small business owners across Ontario, that foundation isn’t only  the balance sheet; it’s a clear, well-structured succession plan.

 We’re standing on the edge of what many call a “silver tsunami.” By 2030, more than one in five Ontarians will be 65 or older. It represents one of the largest transfers of leadership and wealth in history. Today, nearly 75% of business owners are planning to exit within the next decade. For founders, that creates a new reality because it’s no longer about finding just a buyer, it’s about being a business worth finding and buying. Yet while many expect to exit, few have a clear plan for what happens next.

 When entrepreneurs sit down with us, three themes tend to surface:

  • Concentration risk — the majority of their net worth is tied to a single asset: the business
  • Tax complexity — not whether tax will be paid, but how much can be preserved
  • Uncertainty — stepping away is not just financial, but deeply personal

 These challenges are all interconnected. For incorporated business owners, personal and corporate wealth need to be aligned: linking how value is created inside the business with how wealth is ultimately realized outside of it. The goal isn’t  to extract value at the end, but to translate it gradually into long-term financial independence.  Without that bridge, the business risks becoming not a means to an end, but the end itself.

Founders often underestimate Timing

 One of the biggest misconceptions we see is timing. Many founders believe they can decide to sell and complete the process within six months. When in reality, a successful, high-value transition rarely follows a short-term timeline. The average timeline is closer to five years from initial planning to final sale. Understanding this matters because, if you wait until you’re ready to exit — or until you’re burned out — and believe it can be all closed quickly, you’ve already lost leverage and, in many cases, left value on the table. Buyers don’t just assess financial performance; they assess risk. A business heavily dependent on its founder carries a very different profile than one that can operate independently.

 The earlier you start, the more control you have. That’s the takeaway here.  Early planning changes what buyers see. It creates time to strengthen management, reduce key-person risk, and professionalize operations. It also allows for what I often describe as a “financial clean-up”—organizing financials, addressing shareholder loans, and ensuring the business can run without you at the center.  Because ultimately, it’s about being profitable, as well as it’s being sellable.

 One of the  most complex parts of succession is rarely financial, and  happens outside the boardroom and round the dinner table.  We call this “dinner table math,”  when assumptions are made but haven’t (or rarely) been discussed. For example, parents may assume the children will take over the business, but they do not want to. Yet,  the children may feel obligated to, even if their interests lie elsewhere. Beneath it all are unspoken expectations about what feels fair.

Where many transitions begin to unravel

 This is where many transitions begin to unravel. Nearly 70% fail because of breakdowns in communication and trust, versus market conditions. For example, in one case we had one family assume the business would pass to the next generation. Through structured conversations, it became clear that while the children respected what had been built, none of the kids wanted to run it. That honesty  was difficult, but the clarity was necessary.  It opened the door to a different path that was  focused on a structured sale to an external buyer, alongside a plan to distribute proceeds in a way that felt fair and transparent. Just as importantly, it preserved the family relationships.

 These are not decisions founders should navigate alone. With the right advisory team — wealth advisors, accountants and legal professionals — we can help create space for better conversations and more thoughtful decisions.  In our experience, the best work happens alongside a dedicated M&A and investment banking team who can help deliver a more coordinated approach. Preparation becomes more intentional, buyer selection more strategic and outcomes — across valuation, structure, and legacy — more aligned with what matters most. Continue Reading…