REITs have been among the best-performing asset classes over the past 5 years and odds are they are going to under perform other asset classes in the future. Still, I am going to invest the other portion of the Sleepy Portfolio in the iUnits TSX Capped REIT Fund (TSX: XRE). The expense ratio for the iREIT fund is a bit on the higher side at 0.55% and yields about 5.9%.
Jan 4, 2005: Buy TSX: XRE 400@$11.60 + commission $29.95 = $4669.95
The Sleepy Portfolio is an asset-allocation driven, fairly low-cost portfolio with even the most expensive fund has a MER of only 0.75%. In investing about $100,000, we have spent about $300 in commissions (about 0.3%). To keep things simple, the portfolio has only 10 funds in it. It can be tweaked further by:
- The equity portion of the portfolio has a low dividend yield. It might make sense to allocate some of the US large-cap portion to high-yield ETFs like the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend (DVY).
- The portfolio can be given a value tilt by splitting the US equity portions into two and investing half in the value version of the respective indices.
- Probably the best option for the bond portion of the portfolio is laddering the bond maturities and also considering investing in Real Return Bonds.
