How TD Put the “Managed” in ETF Portfolios + MORE Mar 23rd

What Canadian bank was first to launch a line of ETFs? You might think it was BMO, which is by far the biggest bank in the industry today, with more than 70 ETFs and some $37 billion in assets. But in fact it was TD, who were ahead of the curve when they created a small family of ETFs way back in 2001. Five years later, with truly terrible timing, they shuttered those ETFs because of lack of interest. Of course, the industry exploded in popularity almost immediately afterwards.
TD re-entered the ETF marketplace in 2016 with six funds covering the core asset classes: Canadian, US and international stocks (the latter two available with or without currency hedging) and Canadian bonds. The ETFs were copycats of what’s long been available from iShares, BMO and Vanguard, and the launch had almost no fanfare: one suspects TD just wanted to provide another option for their advisors who had been fielding questions about ETFs from clients.
But this week TD launched something innovative: a lineup of five mutual funds that use the bank’s ETFs as their underlying holdings…

‘There’s a bit of a herd mentality,’ warns a prominent investment adviser

When I was a full-time salaried employee (both for this publication and others), I always did my personal taxes using what is now TurboTax. I continue to do so now that I’m self-employed and (arguably) semi-retired. As I do our family’s 2016 taxes, I’m finding the dynamics of preparing the new return increasingly different than in the old days.
For me, it’s now actually a semi-enjoyable task, perhaps because I have more time and don’t have to grab hours from nights and weekends to do so. But what it really underlines is the importance of tax planning.
What I noticed this time around was some (to me at least) strange new T-slips to enter.
As a full-time employee, the key tax document on the income side is the T-4 slip issued by employers, while a crucial document on the tax-minimization side is the RRSP receipt. In semi-retirement, you may see less of those documents and more of their mirror-image counterparts: Instead of a T-4 to record earned income, you may be receiving T4A slips that tell you (and the Government) how much pension income you received in the prior calendar year and how much (if any) tax was withheld at source…

Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena, Sunday, July 17, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned.
Information about Manafort’s transactions was turned over earlier this year to U.S. agents working in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network by investigators in Cyprus at the U.S. agency’s request, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss a criminal investigation.
The Cyprus attorney general, one of the country’s top law enforcement officers, was made aware of the American request…