With Canada being such a small portion of the global equity market, diversifying internationally is very important. My target is 25% US and 25% International + 5% Emerging.Jedi14 wrote: ↑
I still struggle in putting money in international stocks (ex US and Canada) due to its relative poor performance the past decade compared to US and Canada. Most of my equities are in US stocks (70%). Canadian stocks and REITS, 25%. International stocks are at 5%. Equities to fixed income is 60/40. I'm currently reading up on this topic to convince myself I need to increase my international allocation. It doesn't help that the TD International Index fund I bought in 2000 has given me an IRR of 1.66% lol.
I use VTI and VWO for US and Emerging. At the time, there were relatively few options for low cost International but I ended up selecting Mawer International which has been more than acceptable even with a MER of 1.4%. 10 year return has been just over 11% and 15 year is around 10%. International has done well over the longer term. If I was starting now, I would use one of the low cost ETF's to get your international exposure.