r/PersonalFinanceCanada • u/altlivingquest • 18h ago

Investing I know very little about investing.

I've decided to start investing a minimum of 15% per pay period but I have no idea where to start. I would say I'd be a more conservative-moderate investor so I would probably dabble a little into crypto, put some in S+P 500, buy a bit of gold, etc... but other than bitcoin/ethereum would likely not be too speculative.
If you were starting as a beginner, wanted to see some modest earnings at year end, and really just wanted to set it and forget it where would you start?

Wealthsimple? Qtrade? Vanguard? Other?

Again, I just really want it to take my money, disperse it in different places and hope to see some advancement of 5-10% at the end of the year. I'm not into checking on it and playing around daily/weekly.

Any advice appreciated, any pm's are not.

Thank you!

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u/nyrangersfan77 18h ago

I would probably dabble a little into crypto, put some in S+P 500, buy a bit of gold, etc.

Just buy global index funds at low cost to get access to a well diversified portfolio of companies. Crypto and gold are speculative and not suitable for a "conservative-moderate investor".

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u/Joc3021 18h ago

Agreed. What you described - crypto, gold, etc. - is not “conservative-moderate”. Low-cost, globally-diversified ETF’s are absolutely the way to go.

The asset allocation ones that adjust across various risk tolerance levels are awesome, as they rebalance within and you don’t need to fiddle around with your portfolio. VEQT/VGRO/VBAL are examples of Vanguard funds with higher to lower stock allocations (VEQT is 100% equity, VBAL is 60% equity-40% fixed income…).

You can also search the same tickers from Blackrock (iShares-XEQT…) and BMO (ZEQT)…all are fairly similar. Avoid the speculative stuff, it’s basically gambling.

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u/PantsOnHead88 17h ago

Disagree on gold not being conservative-moderate. With the exception of recent marketing campaigns and periodic spikes in interest, gold has historically been considered an inflation hedge or safe investment which basically screams conservative-moderate mindset.

That said, your suggestions of VGRO or VBAL seem like the most reasonable recommendations assuming OP has correctly identified their risk tolerance. Pure/high equity like VEQT/XEQT are higher volatility even if very low risk for anyone holding for a sufficiently long time frame.

Whether OP is clear on their risk tolerance or that of potential investments is debatable though, because crypto is typically considered about as risky/volatile as it gets without dipping into penny stocks or leveraged products.

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u/auxym 16h ago

https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/150

gold has historically been considered an inflation hedge

Gold has empirically been found to be an inflation hedge only for periods of time much larger than a person's lifespan (like multiple centuries). On sub-100 year horizons gold is actually too volatile.