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I have money in wealthsimple for the past 3-4 years and it's been in the negatives pretty much since the start.
The money I put in sp500 since then has grown. (Voo)
Generally speaking, is it better to wait until money in a managed account breaks even before flipping it over to sp500 or cut my losses on the managed account and just put everything in some etfs
It's strange: while I don't like Wealthsimple uninterrupted tinkering with their portfolio, I am surprise you're getting results this bad. VGRO is up more than 20% from 4 years ago. Are you sure your risk profile is high enough?
Anyway you don't necessarily need to wait to break even to move to an other investment: while it would look better, you may have to wait for a long time, so you could miss the performance of your planned investment in the meantime. I'f rather go with XEQT/VEQT than a SP500 ETF though.
I think that was my problem. My risk Level was 5. I had dropped as low as -20% and am still at -10%.
I did recently switch over to higher risk, though. The main reason I didn't was because I wanted to use some of these investments within a few years so low risk was what they recommended.
If you plan on using the money quickly, going with lower risk may be the right choice. Wealthsimple has probably used bonds for that though, and those have taken a beating in the last few years with the interest rates going back up.
Depending on your plan, you may be better off putting your short term money in a HISA ETF : long term, you should get better returns with bonds, but short term, their volatility is superior to those of HISA ETF. If your money is necessary for your short terms projects, ie not having it may affect your plan, you may consider a safer bet.
It was my plans to use that money until my investment tanked. So I'm holding off using it for a while. This is good input. Thank you
Great. I'm sure you know it, but you really don't have to go all-in in S&P500 or even in equities: it may be highly logical depending on your situation to have more savings/fixed income and less equities, especially if you have short term plans.
Yeah, I'm learning that. I'm understanding more why some folks use GICs since they are guaranteed and I have more control of when I want to use the money
Just be careful with GIC, as some of them may lock your money for their complete length, which may not be convenient if you may need the money quickly, for example to buy a house.
Exact same situation, and I'm slowly converting my money over to different ETFs that are pulling me back positive.
I know that CASH.TO is terribly trendy, but I also want to remind you that there are alternatives!
HISA.NEO, NSAV.NE, PSA.TO, and CSAV.TO work exactly the same way and may even offer a slightly higher net rate after fees.
There's also HSAV.TO, which reinvests the interest rather than distributing it, effectively converting it into capital gains. However, due to a technical reason, it is currently valued significantly above its true value ($0.46 as of this morning). It could be a smart fiscal move in the medium to long term, but I don't recommend it unless you fully understand how it works and what you stand to gain or lose.
It would still be convenient to have a generic name to group these ETFs together...
PS: I included links to the issuers for each ETF for those who are curious.
They get called hisa ETFs usually.
The name isn't used that much though, people mainly refer to them as CASH.TO...
EQB.TO to the 🚀🌕