Market swing giving you the jitters? Conservative ETFs to dial down the volatility

Canadian-listed balanced ETFs that tilt toward bonds.
We started this week with an unusually large pullback in the U.S. stock market, followed by strong buying on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
Though news headlines attempted to pinpoint contributing factors to the pullback (unwinding of carry trading, fear of a U.S. recession, overvaluation in tech, to name a few), it is nearly impossible to know exactly why market sentiment changes so quickly.
Regardless, jarring corrections such as the one we saw Monday are a great gut check for investors, telling them to revisit whether they are taking on the appropriate amount of risk to reach their financial goals. A boomer nearing the time they need their cash out is likely well served by being largely invested in less risky assets (cash, money market funds, investment grade bonds), while a Gen Z investor who has a lifetime of earnings ahead of them likely has the capacity to take on a larger allocation to riskier assets (stocks).
Investors must also consider their attitudes toward risk, which should also help define what a reasonable asset mix might look like. Today’s screen looks for ETFs within the global fixed income balanced category, which includes investment funds that hold between 60 per cent and 95 per cent in bonds, the most conservative of balanced fund categories. More specifically I screened for those that have either a four- or five-star rating or have received a Morningstar Medalist Rating of gold, silver or bronze. Readers are reminded that the star rating is a lookback of after-fee risk-adjusted returns against category peers, while the medalist rating is Morningstar’s forward-looking view of a fund’s ability to outperform peers on an after-fee basis, rooted in our analysis of people (quality of the management team), parent (stewardship of the fund company) and process (robustness of investment process).
The ETFs that qualified in the screen are listed in the table accompanying this article, alongside MERs, trailing performance and inception dates. I note importantly that each of these ETFs comes at quite reasonable costs compared with mutual funds in the same category. But ETF fees don’t include the services of a licensed adviser (investment advice, tax or estate planning, etc.), a major contributing factor to their lower annual costs.
This article does not constitute financial advice. It is always recommended to conduct one’s own independent research before buying or selling any of the funds or ETFs mentioned in this article.
Ian Tam, CFA, is director of investment research for Morningstar Canada.
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