Actively managed ETFs in Canada

Horizons offers several actively managed ETFs in Canada. There are ETFs for many different investment flavors. Being actively managed means that the fund manager can actually switch whatever he is investing in. It is a great concept, in theory. There are are couple of issues with them however.

• Performance leaves much to be desired. many of them perform worse than the benchmark (or an equivalent passive ETF).
• Some are very illiquid
• Although most management expense ratios are reasonable for actively managed ETFs (0.70% to 0.75%), there are regrettably  performance fees, in some cases  equal to 20% of the return earned above a certain benchmark. This smells really bad. I theory, if the fund performs really well you'd be happy to pay the 20%, but high fees is not why people buy ETFs for.

North American Value

invests in equities using the deep value approach of Vito Maida, who managed the Trimark Canadian fund during the 1990s and is now with Patient Capital Management

North American Growth

This ETF invests mainly in U.S. growth stocks under the guidance of Stephen Rogers, who ran AGF Management’s American Growth Fund during the 1990s and was named “U.S. Equity Manager of the Decade [1990s]” by Gordon Pape.

Gartman ETF

This ETF gives exposure to the investment strategies of Dennis Gartman, author of The Gartman Letter; Gartman uses fundamental, macro-economic and technical analyses and a variety of investment vehicles to go long or short on a variety asset classes

Performance: -0.88% since inception, vs.  +7.0% for SPX, and +2.1% of the XIU

Managed S&P/TSX 60 ETF:

This ETF seeks long-term capital growth by investing primarily in the constituents of the S&P/TSX 60; managed by technical analyst Ron Meisels until recently, it’s now managed by Frank Mersch (who beat the TSE 300 eight years in a row while managing the Altamira Canadian Equity Growth during the 1990s).


Tactical Bond Fund

This ETF is run by Montreal-based Fiera Capital Inc., who tactically allocates funds across a basket of ETFs tracking different kinds of bonds ranging from government treasuries to corporate bonds to high-yield debt; a closed-end fund scheduled to convert to an ETF

Income Plus Fund

This ETF verweights U.S. Treasury bonds and money market securities in periods of deflation; it will overweight Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) and commodities in a period of inflation; a closed-end fund scheduled to convert to an ETF; uses Barclays Bank’s Multi-Asset Allocation Model

Seasonal Rotation ETF,

This one allocates exposure among equities, fixed income, commodities and currencies according to periods of seasonal strength; managed by Don Vialoux and Brooke Thackray who appear on BNN regularly

Performance since inception:  +3.94%, vs 5.705% SPX, and 1.72% of the XIU

S&P/TSX 60 130/30 Strategy ETF

This ETF ttracks a Standard &Poors index that seeks to outperform the S&P/TSX 60 by overweighting 10 stocks in the index by 3 percentage points and underweighting 10 other stocks in the index by 3 percentage points.

Performance: +5.23%, vs 6.25% of the SPX, and 3.27% of the XIU

Dividend

Investing primarily in major North American companies with above average dividend yields, this EF and is managed by Lyle Stein, the CEO of Leon Frazer


New ETFs:

Bill Cara has said he is working on an actively managed ETF for the CARA100