More Money Podcast - 170 ETFs, Index Funds & Passive Investing in Canada - Atul Tiwari, Managing Director of Vanguard Canada

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

ETFs, index funds...oh my! I talk with Vanguard Canada Investments Managing Director Atul Tiwari about all things passive investing. If you want to dive into a great conversation with an investing pro, this is the episode for you! Long description: For this episode of the podcast, I chat with Atul Tiwari, the managing director of Vanguard Investments Canada. He seriously has such a wealth of knowledge, it was such a treat to ask him pretty much anything and everything about Vanguard, passive investing and some key things us Canadians need to know about how to invest for our futures. To give you a little background on Atul, he joined Vanguard in 2011, but before that was the senior vice president of BMO Asset Management and founding president of BMO Exchange Traded Funds. Before that, he was president of BMO’s U.S. subsidiary mutual fund business, Harris Insight Funds. If that wasn’t impressive enough, he used to practice law. Why Low Fees Are So Important This is a subject that comes up no matter who I’m talking to about investing. Probably because absolutely no one likes to pay high fees! Why would they? As Atul said in the podcast, “The best predictor of your investments’ performance is the cost of them.” In other words, no one can predict the outcome of your investments, but you can control one thing  — the fees you pay. The lower the fees, the more money in your pocket. The thing is, most people have no idea how much they are paying in fees. Typically, if you’re invested in actively-managed mutual funds, you could be paying 2-2.5% on your investments. If you earn a 6% return on your investments, that leaves you with only 3.5-4% after fees. That may sound like nothing, but after decades of investing, that could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s why I’m personally a big fan of low fee index mutual funds and index-based ETFs. They offer the same diversification as actively-managed mutual funds, they track the index, and they have way lower fees. Index Funds in Canada vs. the U.S. This is something I swear no Canadian really knows about. I only figured out the difference when I started doing research about it and talked to a rep at Vanguard for my blog post on investing with Vanguard. They would be the people to ask since Vanguard developed the first ever index mutual fund in 1975. So, when people are talking about index funds in Canada, more times than not they are actually referring to index-based ETFs. In Canada, there are actually only two providers of index mutual funds, Tangerine and TD E-Series. All the big banks offer actively-managed mutual funds, and all the robo-advisors offer index-based ETFs. Then there are the self-directed brokerages like Questrade, though almost all the big banks have their own self-directed brokerages as well. Using those brokerages, you can essentially buy any type of investment product like ETFs, actively-managed mutual funds, stocks, bonds, etc. You cannot however buy index mutual funds. Those can only be bought through those two providers I previously mentioned. Confusing right? Well, the reason I think we Canadians get confused about some of this is because we get a lot of our information from the U.S. In the U.S., index mutual funds are much more popular, and you can even buy them directly from Vanguard. In Canada, you have to go through a brokerage, robo-advisor or financial institution to buy any of Vanguard’s products. The Vanguard Effect Atul mentioned in the episode a thing called “The Vanguard Effect” which was originally coined by Morningstar. What this effect means is that when Vanguard enters a new market, like Canada (though it was originally coined when it entered the U.K.), because it offers such low-fee products, it causes other investment product providers to also lower their fees. For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/170 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Episode 170 of the Momany Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thanks for joining me for another episode. This one is all about investing. More and more, I'm loving the topic of investing. If you've been a longtime listener of mine, and there are quite a few of you who were there on episode one three years ago, which is amazing. That was a long-term relationship, friends. We've been dating. We're talking marriage at this point. Anyway, so if you've been there since the beginning, you probably remember some of those early episodes I had with guests about investing where, I'll be honest, didn't know heck of a lot.

I thought I did. And then you talk to someone smarter than you about investing who has way more experience. You're like, oh, I've got a lot to learn. Well, I have learned quite a lot in three years. And honestly, a lot of it has to do with me having guests on the show talking about investing. So I kind of feel like if I'm learning, you guys are learning because you were also listening to those episodes that I did. Anyways, for this episode, I'm very excited about it because I'm talking to Atal Tawari. He's the managing director and the head of Vanguard Investments Canada. So if you've been listening to the last few episodes, Vanguard Canada has been the sponsor for a couple episodes.

Thanks, Vanguard. And I decided to also have one of their people on the show because I'm a big fan of Vanguard. I know a lot of my American friends are and it's becoming a lot more well known in Canada, which is exciting. And the reason Vanguard so cool is they invented like this Vanguard, they invented the index fund, guys. Super nerdy, super exciting. So anyway, so I actually wrote a really, well, in my opinion, great blog post about it. Just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash Vanguard to read all about Vanguard. It kind of goes into like the history of Vanguard and also what Vanguard Canada is about because it's part of Vanguard, but it's in Canada. So they offer different products than what they offer in the States.

But anyways, we do kind of talk about that in the episode. And we just talk about investing as a whole and just some things that you really do need to know about. And I'm excited because as I've mentioned a lot in my email list, my Facebook group, and social... I don't know. Maybe I haven't mentioned social media. Maybe just my email list and Facebook group. I am in the midst of working on an investing course. I'm hoping to have it done in the next few weeks. It's actually going to be a two-parter.

So I'm actually going to have two different investing courses because there's just so much content. I had to split it up into two courses. But anyways, so to get you kind of pumped about this episode and to give you a little background on Atal Tiwari, my guest, he has a really interesting background. So he joined Vanguard back in 2011. But before that, he was the Senior Vice President of BMO Asset Management. And he was also the founding president of BMO Exchange Traded Funds. So he's a big fan of ETFs. Who isn't? If that's not impressive enough, he also has experience practicing law. He was called to the

Law Society of Upper Canada and the Supreme Court of England and Wales. So this guy knows what he's talking about. He's super passionate about investing too, which is why he eventually started working with Vanguard. But we're going to get to all of that interesting stuff in this episode, which I'm going to get to right now. Well, thank you at all for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. I'm excited to talk investing with you. Thank you for having me, Jessica. You are so welcome. Before we kind of dive in to all the questions I have to ask you, I'm very excited about, I'd love to get to know you a little bit more because you have a very interesting background. You've been in the game for a long time, have held some very important positions, and you've been with Vanguard for a while too. That's right.

Yes. So I've been in the financial services industry for probably over 20 years now and I'm actually a reformed lawyer. I know I saw that. What happened there? I was a corporate securities lawyer and working within the investment banking and securities practice in the BMO Financial Group.

And I kind of was very interested in learning more about businesses and how they work and how they run. And eventually was able to join the asset management group in a non-legal role. So that put me over into more of the executive management stream and strategy and all of those fun things. So that's how it started. I set up the BMO ETFs and have been an avid supporter of ETFs and low-cost investing for many years and ultimately was able to join Vanguard and lead Vanguard into Canada. I'd been, as I mentioned, a fan of ETFs and low-cost investing and Mr. John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, has written, I think, 10 books now and I've read all of them.

Oh, wow. And it was quite something to have the opportunity then to join the firm that he had founded and certainly a person that I admire quite a bit and had looked up to in my early years in the industry. Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan of his. I just, this summer was able to read his to read his little book of common sense investing, and I'm just obsessed with it. So, big fan over here, too. Right. Good to hear. Yeah. Very cool. So, you've been with Vanguard Canada for a little while.

So, I think when I think of Vanguard, I've been familiar with the brand Vanguard for a number of years because I've been in the personal finance and blogging community for over seven years. And I kind of got familiar with it from all the American bloggers I know. They love Vanguard. They're all about it. But I feel like in terms of Canada, people still aren't actually very aware that there's a difference between Vanguard as the company that started back in the 70s, and then Vanguard Canada, because it only recently kind of came to Canada. Is that correct? That's right. So I was hired in May of 2011 to be the first Canadian crew member. And that's what we call our employees. You know, there's a nautical theme. And so we launched, listed our first six Canadian ETFs in December of 2011.

So we've been in the market for almost seven years now. And you're right, in the U.S., Vanguard started in 1975 by Mr. Vogel. So Canada is one of the non-U.S. countries of focus for Vanguard. And there's a deep commitment to the country. And we're now up to almost 60 crew members in Canada across all of our products that we distribute into Canada or have listed here. We've now got about $30 billion in assets under management that Canadians have entrusted to us in the last seven years. So we're very happy about the growth.

And as you've pointed out, in the U.S., Vanguard is a household name. In Canada, not so do in the future is get the brand and our principles and our structure and all of those things that make us unique more well-known absolutely what do you feel like is um i guess the biggest reason why um vanguard isn't as well known in canada at the minute is it because it's only recently kind of launched in the past couple of years? You just have a lot of competition from the big banks? Yes. Yeah.

I mean, when we came into the market in 2011, I think there was a belief that Vanguard was better known than it actually was. And so we learned through our early days that we needed to go back to the basic principles of educating everybody on who Vanguard is and what we do. So the thing that makes us unique is our ownership structure. So in the United States, individuals own our mutual funds and our ETFs. And then those mutual funds and ETFs in turn own Vanguard, the company. So basically, you could think of Vanguard as a mutual. And the way that the company operates, again, in the US is at cost. So once we pay,

you know, the salaries and the premises and the technology bills, everything else goes back to the investors in the form of lower and lower fees. So it's a very unique model in the financial services industry. And it's allowed us to, you know, over the last 40 odd years, continuously reduce the price of investing in our products as a result of this structure and the scale that we've attained globally at now over $5 trillion in assets. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about fees because the idea of- One of our favorite topics. Yes. I love talking about fees.

And I feel like, honestly, it's only been in the past couple of years that people in the media or just in general are more aware of the fees that they're paying for their investments. But also the media is talking about why it's so important to keep fees low. This was never a conversation that honestly was that prevalent,

I'd say in the past five years. But recently, in the past couple years, but recently in the past couple of years, people are talking more about it. Why do you think that is? Do you think it is because a lot more companies are coming out with these ETFs, they have low fees. So there's like, oh, there's another option. There's not just high fee mutual funds out there to invest in. And why, you know, we'll start with that. Why do you think this conversation is happening right now, especially in Canada, where it's probably happened for a while in the US, about the cost of fees? Like, most honestly, like a couple years back, I would talk to friends, and they had no idea they were even paying fees. aware of the fees that they're paying in their investments. And that's unfortunate. But, you know, part of it is investor awareness. And, you know, there is some accountability, I think,

on the part of investors to also understand what they're paying and the value that they're getting for what they're paying for. So education awareness, very important. And I think over the last, as you pointed out, few years, a few companies have done well in promoting this fact that, you know, you need to look at the cost of your investments because countless studies have shown that the best predictor of your future performance in your investments is the cost of them. That's it. That's very simple. So it's a very important thing for investors to focus on. I think we'd like to think that we had something to do with raising the discussion level a little bit in the space. There's something called the Vanguard effect that

Morningstar, which is an independent company, coined. And what that is, is that when Vanguard comes into a new market, say like Canada, they actually were talking about the UK when they coined it. But Vanguard comes into a new market. The competitors drop their fees so that they can compete with Vanguard. And where the competitors are in similar mandates, you'll actually see pricing come down quite a bit. And we've quantified that in Canada in the 13 asset classes where we do compete, prices have come down over the last seven years in 12 of them. In the 12 where we don't compete, they've only come down in five of them. So we like to hope that what we're doing doesn't just benefit Vanguard investors, but rather all Canadian investors,

because our competitors are forced to bring down their fees. And that helps more and more people. Yeah, absolutely. So I know, you know, kind of ETFs, people are talking a lot more about that, especially younger people, and especially people that are getting more into investing or DIY investing, they want to be more active themselves and be more involved, which is great. Because I feel like when I was growing up, all I knew is like, oh, once you want to start investing, you have to go with a financial advisor and they just kind of take care of it. So I'm really excited that a lot more people, especially younger people, want to kind of take the initiative and learn more about it. So they're

more empowered and everything like that. So it does seem like ETFs are kind of a popular choice now just because of the lower fees compared to actively managed mutual funds. But I remember also just because a lot of the financial literacy content out there is by the US. So sometimes it's complicated as a Canadian to be like, wait, that's a little bit different than in Canada. They would always talk about index funds and ETFs. And still to this day, people are very confused about the difference. And I think a big reason is because in Canada, and what I've realized by doing my research, index funds or index mutual funds is what they really are, aren't as popular as index-based ETFs in Canada. Why do you think that is? Right. That's a very good point, Jessica. It's interesting. The Canadian market, the way it's developed is that the market structure has been such that most mutual funds are distributed through

an intermediary, a person. And that person gets compensated for distributing the product. That's called a trailer commission. And so over the years, just the way the market had developed, most of the mutual funds that were created and distributed were actively managed equity or actively managed fixed income. In fact, as you point out, 98% of the $1.5 trillion in mutual funds in Canada are in active mandates. So there really wasn't a lot of choice for individuals or advisors. The manufacturers didn't create a lot of indexed mutual funds. And the offerings that were out there, you know, there wasn't a lot of promotion of them.

And so what's happened in Canada is that ETF providers came into that space and created beta or indexed ETFs. And so Canada, to some degree, has skipped indexed mutual funds and gone straight to ETFs for their vehicle for indexing. So now when you look at the ETF market, there's about $160 billion in assets in Canada. And the vast majority of those are what you would consider passive or indexed ETFs. And in fact, when you look at the flows into the ETF space, you know, 70% still goes to the broad beta or passively indexed ETF products, which can be available at, as you pointed out, very, very attractive prices. Absolutely. And easy too, because now, since Canada has so many, well, not so many compared to the US, but quite a few options

in terms of robo-advisors, it's actually very easy for people that don't necessarily want to do the work and use a discount brokerage to buy ETFs themselves. They can get into ETFs pretty easily by going with one of the robo-advisors, which is, it's nice to see because I feel like one of the biggest kind of roadblocks in terms of investing, especially for young investors who are the main people that I talk to, is they don't want to go to a traditional kind of investment company and talk to somebody in an office. It's intimidating.

They'd rather kind of go online and do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, we think it's a great thing too, the whole space of robo-advisors or digital wealth providers, whatever you want to call them. Quite frankly, at the rates that are being charged to manage your money, it seems like a good place for young investors to start or kind of get to be familiar with the investing world because you can get in with some pretty low minimums. The advice fee is pretty good. And then as you pointed out, most of them will use ETFs in their portfolio. So the product cost is reasonably low. When you put it all together, it's a pretty good way for young

investors to go. And, you know, you get essentially, you get institutional style money management for a very reasonable cost. And the digital provider will do a lot for you. In other words, they will rebalance your portfolio to where you want it to be to, you know, achieve your financial goals. So we're encouraged by the development. It's still small in the Canadian space, but growing. And you may know that in the US, we've got a very large digital offering. It's now at about, I think, $110 billion in assets, but we call it personal advisor services. And we found that there's a lot of demand for it. And it's something that we're going to continue building. Yeah, no, I think it'll definitely,

like I'm in a bit of a bubble. So I'm like, oh, yeah, everyone's talking about robo advisors and ETFs. That's not the case for most people at their kitchen table. No one's talking about it. It is at ours, but not too many other people. No, not at most people's what I've been realizing. But I definitely foresee that in the future, robo advisors will become more commonplace. It just takes a while. I mean, I still remember when ING Direct, which is now Tangerine, started having commercials and started becoming a little bit more talked about back in, I guess, the early, around 2009, 2010. And I would talk to people like, oh, this sounds like an interesting idea. Again, no fees and all this kind of stuff. It's all

online. And people were just so like, oh, no, it's going to fold. It seems like not secure. It sounds scary. It's all online. And now it's, you know, kind of a commonplace bank and it's not a big deal anymore. But so I think it's going to take some time, I think, for Canadians to become more comfortable with the idea of these online platforms. But I feel like that's just the direction things are going to go into. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. It will. And I think that's natural, you know,

when you have new providers in a market, and especially when you're dealing with your own money, you know, you want to make sure that the company is solid, it's going to be around, you know, that the people involved have some experience. And so, you know, I think it's natural for investors to want to take some time to get to know the offerings out there and eventually, you know, hopefully they'll trust it enough to give it a try. Absolutely. So speaking of offerings, you mentioned that when Vanguard Canada launched, you launched with six ETFs. Is that right? Yeah, six.

That's correct. And now you have over 37. Is that right? We have exactly 37 Canadian listed ETFs. That's right. Wow. So are all of those index-based or what kind of ETFs? Why are there so many and what do they do?

Well, yes, most of them are index-based. 33 of the 37 are index based uh etfs and the other four are what we would call active factor etfs so they're they're what you would consider a quantitative based etf that the the money is managed using certain screens. And there is some discretion in the Vanguard money managers to, to make, excuse me, active decisions. The other 34 follow an index and we manage them all to that index as closely as we can. So the offering actually when you,

when you look at some of our competitors 37 actually isn't a lot of ETFs. We don't believe in product proliferation. Our new product process is very rigorous. There's a list of things that Vanguard will not do because it doesn't meet our investment principles. So again, you'll recall our unique structure. Since we're not a public company, there's no incentive for us to engage in short-term behavior, to meet quarterly analyst goals. We're not a private company owned by a family or a few people, so we're not beholden to a small group's interests. We're able to actually sit back, look at the products, and say, you know, we're only going to come out with products that we believe have a long-term enduring need in investors' portfolios. If we think it's a short-term fad, and an example would be thematic ETFs, we're not going to come out with the marijuana ETF or the driverless car ETF,

that sort of thing. We think those are bubbles, short-term fads, and we don't think that from our view of investing principles, it's appropriate for people to pile into those types of investments. We would say you're better off taking a long-term view, setting your financial goals and objectives, getting your asset allocation down, and then rebalancing to your asset allocation. In the long term, you know, we really believe that that's going to serve investors much better than, you know, chasing the latest fad or the hottest returns. And I would just add, you know, we've created some products that mirror that philosophy, which we came out with in February. There's three asset allocation ETFs. And what they do is for 22 basis points, you purchase the ETF and it's

one ticket, it's one ETF. And then underneath that, we have seven of our other ETFs that get rebalanced into certain proportions based on what the investor has chosen. So 60% equity, 40% fixed income. And we will constantly keep it at a set it and forget it. You know, you buy it and we will constantly keep it at that allocation for you. So it sounds like it's almost your kind of version of like a robo-advisor in terms of, you know, people go to robo-advisors so they can easily buy ETFs and it's rebalanced and they don't have to think about it. It's set and forget it. Is that kind of like the similar way of thinking for it? It is, but that's certainly not the intention of the product. We definitely, it really is a product. So, you know, as an investor, you will need to determine whether you want to be in the 60-40 or the 40-60, you know, that's your decision.

And, you know, we don't offer some of the other services there that the robos would like. Like financial advice or anything like that. Yeah, so it's just the rebalancing basically. Right, or tax efficiency, those sorts of things. That's up to the individual and their advisor at this stage. Okay, great. Well, that's really cool. I think that's an interesting kind of innovation. Yeah, they've done really well. I mean, we're over 700 million in those products where basically each month they're attracting about 100 million in assets.

Wow. Yeah, very, very happy with it. I bet you are. I think the market was ready. There was a time a few years ago where we looked at similar products and we were going to launch them, but we just, in conversations with a number of advisors, felt like they weren't ready for it. And those conversations changed a lot over the last year. So we felt like now was the time to come out as well as, as you pointed out, the growing awareness of fees and investing at the retail level, at the individual level. And it just seemed like a right time. And fortunately for us and for our end investors, you know, it was good timing. Definitely. you know it was it was it was a good timing definitely um and i know you guys recently

also launched it seems like you're always kind of launching new um products but you have another one that just came out has a very long name but the ticker is b-i-d-y can you explain what what is that and why you launched that um at the end of august sure um and and i must say you know vanguard's well known for its plain talk and brevity. But with this one, unfortunately, there's a lot of regulations that go into the name of what you call something and we couldn't shorten it. So it's the Vanguard FTSE developed ex-North America high dividend yield index ETF. Yeah, not easy to say in a conversation, is it? That's a mouthful, all right.

So the ticker symbol is VITI, I think we've been calling it. Yeah, that's easy, yeah. Yeah, various V-I-D-Y. And so it's basically, it's an ETF that basically we're trying to provide investors with an opportunity for stronger equity yield potential. So in other words, income. Income is a very topical theme in investments, especially these days where fixed income is not yielding a lot of income for investors. So there's been a lot of interest in dividend products where you'll get a higher distribution or yield than you would, say, in an average beta product that's following

the entire market. Like with a lot of things that Vanguard does, we believe that you should have broad diversification. So this ETF in particular will give you access to 23 developed international markets outside of North America. And it was a product that we felt we were missing in our suite. So we came out with it a couple of months back. Okay. So but this particular ETF shouldn't necessarily, when you're looking at your asset allocation, shouldn't replace the fixed income or is it kind of a replacement? Okay. It still would be in the equities section. Correct. It's an equity product. And that's a good point though, Jessica, because when people think about yield or distributions, sometimes they will make some decisions

that have impacts that they may not realize are impacts. So I'll give you an example. When somebody says, you know, I've got a bond portfolio, and I'm only getting, you know, I'm only getting two and a half percent on my bonds that are being held, I need more yield or more interest. And then they'll go and buy a high yield bond. It's considered a bond ETF that may yield five or six percent. And then they'll feel like, hey, this is great. Now I'm getting more interest income paid to me. But when you look at how high yield bonds behave, especially in times of crises, they actually behave just like equities, because there's more risk involved in high yield bonds. So when you had the fiscal crisis, for example, you know,

the value of your high yield bond portfolio would have plummeted like your equity portfolio did. And it did not behave like your classic government or strong corporate bond would. And so when you think about bonds and equities, it's important that you also kind of consider the nature of the bonds that you're holding. And just to conclude on your point, they are not a substitute for equities and they shouldn't be. They're actually, you know, they're actually there to be an offset to the volatility of the returns that you're going to get through your equities. Absolutely. I would love to kind of talk a little bit about that because I'm sure you have quite a bit of experience in terms of a financial crisis, market correction, all that kind of stuff. It's been a while since our last one. So I think a lot of young investors don't have that experience. I certainly do. That's when I

graduated university 2009, not a great year. So I'm like, oh, okay, so this is interesting. So I feel like there's a whole generation of young investors that have just been experiencing or seeing really great returns are like, oh, great, I'm just going to have a portfolio of like, you know, 90% equities, what could go wrong? What are some people, what are some things, especially young investors who've never experienced, you know, kind of a market crash? What should they be aware of? What should they, you know, be prepared for? Yeah, good point. You're right. There's probably a number of your listeners and who haven't actually experienced that cycle. And as you pointed out,

some of us have experienced too many of them. It makes you it makes you a bit wary. The I would say, you know, the important thing gets back to, we talked a little bit about this. It gets back to having an understanding of what your financial goals are. You know, whether you're saving for college, whether you're saving for a house. And for some of us, you know, you're saving for retirement. I mean, you should look at your goals, what you need to get you there, and then set an asset allocation that, you know, based on various factors you think will get you there when you need that income or you need to buy a house. So that's the most important thing. Once you do that and you feel good about it, after that, it's important to rebalance.

So if you said, I'm young, I can take some risks, I'll be 80% equities, 20% fixed income. Well, if equities perform really well and your portfolio grows there and you become 90% equity, 10 fixed income, you should sell some of your equity and put it into fixed income. So you stay at 80-20. That's important. That's hard to do as an investor. That's where we talked a little bit about robo-advisors who will do that for you,

or an advisor can help you with that if you're not comfortable doing that on a regular basis, a couple of times a year, for example. So that's very important. And it's important to, if you feel that your goals are correct, it's important to stick to your asset allocation. Forget about the noise in the market. So if, you know, if the market goes down 20%, you shouldn't make rash decisions and start selling everything. That is one of the biggest mistakes investors make. They sell at the wrong time and they buy

at the wrong time. And that combined with chasing historical returns. So in other words, you look at the performance of, say, a certain active mutual fund and you say, wow, it's done really well the last five years. I'm going to buy it. And inevitably, the next five years, it's not going to do as well. So that's important to keep in mind, too. I think those are probably two of the biggest mistakes. And it's not just young investors, by the way. It's really all investors.

And a lot of it is you could spend a lot of time talking about behavioral economics. And I'm sure you've read a lot of that, Jessica. That's the point. Look, we're all human beings. You know, it's in our nature to do this kind of stuff. So you have to understand that that is probably, you know, your personality. And most people will make those decisions. So you really have to either be disciplined about it or talk to someone who can help you and be a professional and coach you

around those times when things may, you know, not be doing so well in the markets. Absolutely. Yeah. I hear a lot of, especially when there is kind of a dip in the market, that's when people panic. And honestly, even for me, I recently been testing out just buying some individual stocks just to kind of test it out and see if I could actually stomach it. And it's hard seeing those ups and downs. And it's just, I know, logically, it doesn't make sense to sell when it's starting to dip. But that's literally what was my reaction the other day. I'm like, maybe I should sell and just I'll salvage what I've got. I'm like, wait, what am I doing?

I know better. I know this is the opposite of what I should be doing. It's very difficult. Even the smartest person will feel like they want to do it. Well, absolutely. it well absolutely and you know i've got family members uh my sister who uh in in 2009 when everything was falling apart you know she called me and uh we had uh set up some portfolios for my nieces at the time to kind of um be educational uh pools for them when they go to college and and she called me up and said whoa like I looked at it it's way down should I

sell and I said do not sell yeah do not touch that the worst thing you could do because we're talking about you know um something that we need in probably 10 years uh and leave me yeah you know it's gonna it'll come back it's a question, but, you know, now is not the time. So that's probably a good example of where somebody, whether it's a person or a robo that does it for you, can take that decision out of your hands. Yes. You have to kind of, you have to trust it. Yes. And even the people that I know who do use robo advisors, they still panic, though luckily they can't can't like press a button that says sell but um it's it's i think it's important to for i always tell people this i'm like if you're feeling

kind of panicky but you know you're especially investing for the long term you don't need that money until you retire in 30 to 40 years just stop checking your account you don't need to know right now don't check and so for me i check monthly just because I update my net worth monthly, but I've gotten into the habit like it is what it is. And for most people, if you don't need to, check it once a year, a couple of times a year, but don't do it too regularly. If the app is on your phone and you're checking it daily, delete the app. That's a very good point. And I think I saw some statistic. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but the number of times the average person goes into their cell phone,

you know, punch in their, their, their password to look at their emails or the net. I mean, I think it was in, it was over a hundred, I think. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's probably true. Right. And that's probably true. And it's probably just going to get higher. So it's a very good point. Even if you go into your Safari or what have you, there's no need to look at your statement or your account that many times a day or even that many times a week. Absolutely. And before I let you go, because I really appreciate Vanguard Canada's website,

lots of great free resources on there. My favorite tool is probably the investor questionnaire. So when people are listening to this interview and could we talk a little bit about how to determine your preferred asset mix, how much equities, how much fixed income should you do? I really like the free tool that you have to, you know, basically it's just an investor questionnaire.

You answer all these questions and it'll kind of spit out a suggestion on what your ideal asset mix should be depending on all these factors, like your risk tolerance and time horizon goals and all that kind of stuff. So is there any other kind of tools or resources that you guys can provide that might be interesting for listeners? No, thank you. I'm glad you used that tool on our site. We think it's great to just, you know, part of our mandate we've talked about is education and just trying to help investors make good decisions and right decisions. So that's terrific. No, I would just echo that

and say, you know, we do create a lot of thought leadership pieces as well. And those will always be on our website. And Vanguard does try to, you know, put out thought leadership that is well-researched, you know, that we hope provides investors with education. And we're not about pushing our products. So most of the time you won't see any mention of our products in there. But really, the idea is to share, you know, the research that a lot of our bright investment strategists do around the globe. So that's always something to look at as well. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, Atal, for taking the time to chat with me about investing. It was a pleasure. Great. Well, thank you very much as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Atal, for taking the time to chat with me about investing. It was a pleasure. Great. Well, thank you very much as well, Jessica. Thanks for the time. And hopefully this will be helpful to some of your listeners. And that was episode 170 with Atal Tiwari. He's the Managing Director and Head of Vanguard Investments Canada. Make sure to check out VanguardCanada.ca for more info about them. They actually have honestly, honestly, a lot of great free resources I use there. They have this investment questionnaire that basically helps you determine what your risk tolerance is, but also if you are a DIY investor, or if you want to go with a robo-advisor and you want to get kind of an outside perspective on what should your

asset mix be, like what percentage of equities to fixed income should you be. I use that questionnaire all the time. It's on their website and you just go through the questionnaire and then it kind of spits out this is what your asset mix should be. But they have a lot of great free resources on their website, which is great. And as I mentioned, I also wrote a lengthy blog post all about them. So if you want to read that, go to jessicamorehouse.com slash Vanguard. I'll also include a link in the show notes. Speaking of the show notes, go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 170 to read more about what we talked about. Get kind of the Coles notes and all that good stuff. A couple exciting things to announce. So first and foremost, in about a week's time, next Wednesday, October 10th, I am going to be doing a free webinar. Anyone can sign up. It is all about side hustles. So for the past little year, two, year and a half, year, I don't know. Time's weird. I don't actually remember how long it's been, but I've been doing this workshop presentation throughout Toronto for a year or two. I can't remember. All about how to become a side hustler. And it's a bit of a hit. They've had me back to so many different places.

And I thought, hey, so for people who do not live in Toronto, I should probably do something for them in case they want to learn about how to start a side hustle. It is, again, my kind of background. I started my own side hustle. It helped me earn more than my day job, which was important because, you know, like seven or eight years ago, I was making peanuts. So I needed to, you know, make some extra money. And then eventually, you know, all these years later, turned that side hustle into my full time hustle. So in this free webinar, I go into what are the different kind of categories of side hustles? What are the steps to kind of create an, you know,

an idea, do some brainstorming? And what are some action steps that you can do so you can start your own side hustle and make some extra money? For me, the benefits are kind of obvious, but the more money you make, the sooner you can reach your financial goals. That's really what it comes down to. I'm not trying to sell you some get rich quick. I don't believe in that crap. I believe in hard work and the hustle. And I think if you're interested in figuring out, you've budgeted to the max, there's nowhere else to cut back. Sometimes you need to make some extra money. So a side hustle is one way to do that. So anyways, if you would like to save a seat, register, just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash side hustle webinar. Once again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash

side hustle webinar or go to the show notes and you can sign up, save your seat. It'll be a ton of fun. What else is there? What else is there? I always feel like I'm forgetting something. I think that's the big news for the minute. As I mentioned, working on an investing course, hopefully it is going to be complete and ready to become public in the next couple weeks. But the way you'll find out first is, of course, going on to my email list, jessicmorehouse.com slash subscribe. Oh, I remembered what I was going to do. It's been a little while since I've done some iTunes reviews, so I'm going to do some shout outs. So I'm going to get to a couple of those right now. Okay, first review

is from Rebecca's a rebel from Norway. Shut the front door girl. Thank you from Norway that or you're from Norway. I'm not but you know I'm saying thank you so much. Norway I've always wanted to go there. Okay, so anyways, a review is super engaging. Upon discovering this podcast, I literally binged all of the episodes in two weeks. Oh my God. The show has really interesting guests and topics. And Jessica's interviewing style is casual, but super engaging at the same time. I feel like I want her to be my new BFF. Keep up the great work. You can be my BFF if I can stay at your place if I go to Norway. How's that sound? Thank you so much. Rebecca is a rebel. Oh, sorry. I am wearing glasses. So that's no excuse. I just misread

that. So thank you so much for that review. Next up, I've got from AML7368 from the US of A. Really enjoy this podcast. It's such a nice balance of depth and fun. And it also has a nice balance of the very topics in the personal finance space. Also, side note, I love her laugh. She loves my laugh. It brings such a smile to my face. The sad thing is, no, I'm like, when do I laugh? Do I laugh on my own when I'm doing the interest and outros? That's sad. No, I guess I do laugh during the interviews. I don't even notice when I do that. Thank you so much for your review. I appreciate it. And thanks for saying that you like my laugh. Got one here, recent one from, sorry, Vincent B75 from Canada. Hello, great podcast. I just want to let you know that the

CoinUp app quoted in the podcast is not available in Canada. What a pity. I know. And I believe, like I am 99% sure that we did talk about that within the interview because I'm obviously Canadian and I cannot use it. So you may not have, you may have missed that bit of the episode. So yeah, sorry. But they do say on their website, and I do remember asking her, this is why I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's in that episode. I could just re-listen to it, but she said that they hope to bring it to other countries, including Canada in 2019. So look out for that, hopefully. So thank you for taking the time to give me a review and share your thoughts. If you're listening for the first time ever,

feel free to do that. And I will put you into the next episode, give you a nice little shout out because I like seeing what you feel and you think and all that kind of stuff. Okay. Anyways, I will be back next week with a fabulous episode with a gal I've known for a while, Amanda Abea.

She was a personal finance blogger. Now she's a sales coach. And we talk about earning money. As much as I love talking about investing, I love talking about earning some coins. So that is what you got to look forward to next week. I'll be back here next Wednesday. I will see you then.