The thing is I am a little worried about the USD stuff I own. I own it through VTI ETF. And in order to buy USD ETF for Canadians you have to get USD (either by doing Norbert Gambit or another way). But in order for Norbert Gambit to be worth it (to absorb the fees), you have to transfer a substantial amount of $, so, personally, I am not able to regularly buy US stuff which kind of exposes me to exchange rate between both currencies when I buy the US stuff (for example once/year).
Isn't against popular MMM philosophy of being often to reduce the ''market timing'' impact?
You can buy VUN in CAD [same underlying stocks as VTI] with regular small additions then once you have a big chunk of VUN you can sell it and do Norbert's Gambit to buy VTI. That way you are invested all the time and not trying to lump sum once a year.
Yes, that's what I do, I am still waiting to have enough to buy VTI again.
So basically, the logic would be that if I regularly by VUN (which is US market in CAD), I would buy it at different USD-CAD exchange rate. But then when I sell it to buy VTI, I am not dependent of that day's exchange rate?
(I'm sorry, I got to admit I have a hard time understanding the impact of exchange rate)
Personally, I feel it might be better if you completely skip the "conversion" from VUN into VTI. I understand they are in your RRSP and therefore the cost is minimal but increased trading frequency could hurt you in terms of spread. In reality, even in the best case of carrying out a Norbert's you would still lose a bit of money every time (not to mention when the day comes and you want to use the money but would need to convert back to cad again). Yes the appreciating CAD vs USD caused on drag on the returns this year, but a hedged etf would have "fixed" most of the issue, ie, VUS. It is just my opinion and entirely up to you.
Also, like other posters have already mentioned, over long periods of time the currency variation will largely be a wash, which is the case if you compare monthly raw s&p returns (SP) vs SP+exchange rate dating back to the 70s.
Regarding bonds, I noticed you switched from 10% to 0%, which is fine as long as you are comfortable with it. It is my opinion and experience that bonds do have a place in most portfolios, even 10% allocation would do wonders in reducing volatilities to achieve higher
risk adjusted returns.
edit: lol I even wrote down RRSP yet the 15% completely escaped me, thanks for pointing that out, daverobev. Hedging is not perfect, but VUS has the same mer as VUN.