The Intelligent Asset Allocator book

[Catherine Convery]

Mr. MM recommends the book The Intelligent Asset Allocator. The author, William Bernstein, recommends an index fund portfolio with 25% each U.S. large and small stock, foreign stocks, and U.S. bond fund. Since I am based in Canada, do I need to adapt this advice to a Canadian context or can I just adopt this advice literally?

Thanks!

[NotAnExpert]

If your savings will mostly be used in the future to support yourself in Canada, then you definitely need more Canadian exposure in your portfolio in order to reduce your exchange rate risk.  There are lots of Canadian based Exchange Traded Funds that are excellent for adjusting Bernstein's portfolio for Canadians.  I would start with the Vanguard Canada funds, which are just slightly more expensive as far as management ratios go than the US counterparts.
https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/advisors/etfs/etfs.htm

They do not yet offer anything in the small-cap stock space, but you can easily just stay with a US-based ETF for that allocation, or just go with the iShares Canada offerings, which are a little bit more pricey in terms of management fees.

I'm working currently on switching my portfolio slowly away from individual stocks and more into the ETF space.