The Morningstar CPMS methodology screens for stocks which have strong cashflows relative to debt, a strong history of maintaining and increasing dividends, as well as other value based screens. It does not "yield hunt" in order to generate a higher yield. It's based on strong fundamentals.

While we're waiting, I'll give participants a little primer on us as a company. We're a Canadian, management owned investment firm with about $3 billion in AUM.

There are Quebec based pension funds that have a Quebec centric benchmark as part of their focus, so creating an etf for them to use helps them minimize their own tracking error to their benchmarks. Plus, it gives retail investors in Quebec the opportunity to invest "in their own backyard"

@Jonathan the XTF Morningstar etfs are delivering "intelligent beta" but are different from RAFI on many levels....

I am attempting to convince my parents to drop the high MER MFs they have most of their savings in, and get into a indexed based ETF portfolio. They are both 56. Any suggestions on ETFs from your company that might fit in this low cost category?

But all the XTF Morningstar ETFs can be used as core holdings for both Canadian and US equity exposure. For something a little different, I suggest people also look at our covered call ETFs which again strive for the core equity exposure but strong risk adjusted profile

Given the volatile nature of the current market we have around $300K in cash. Can you please recommend a good ETF parking place for this money.

I always struggle when people ask for a parking place. If you are looking to eliminate equity or fixed income market exposure, a good place is cash! If you still want exposure to the equity markets but want to mitigate some of the volatility, our covered call ETFs might be a good choice.

Thanks Jess a good question. As you know, liquidity of an ETF is driven by the liquidity of the underlying holdings, not historical volume.....

the spreads should never be wider than 3 or 4 cents. The market maker is there in size (10-30K shares) on either side so you should never have a problem exiting a position. It is always a challenge with new ETFs. To a certain extent, you need to trust the people you're dealing with. Call us and we can help out. Further to that, we monitor the spreads constantly and try to ensure they are one or two cents in normal markets

What is the advantage of choosing XTF's covered call products over others? How are they different?

Could you elaborate on some of the specifics of the covered call ETFs. What % of the portfolio would have call written against it?
Can that vary from month to month? How far ahead are the calls typically written?

We write the calls monthly, at the money, on each holding. There is no discretion in terms of how much we write. We can choose to write longer than 30 days, but rarely do so. We focus on the most liquid, efficient part of the market, which is short dated ATM options......

Hello, I'm very excited by the emergence of ETFs. The growth rates of net inflows is very impressive, but what key barriers stand in the way of faster proliferation? Mutual Fund Advisors for example?

Advisors have been slower to adapt, but the growth of the ETF market will accelerate in my view as more and more of them adopt ETFs in their portfolio construction processes. I predict the Canadian market will be $100 billion in 3 years.....

Please tell us why volume doesn't matter with ETF's

I don't want to be overly complex, so the easiest way for a person to test liquidity is to look at the underlying stocks or bonds. Are they liquid? If so, the ETF could transact in huge volume at the click of a button. A new ETF could have traded no shares all day, then at 3:30 print a buy for 500K shares, because of the ability to execute the necessary buy/sells in the underliny at the same time. Hope that makes sense

My understanding of what you have just said is that in a sustained up market you would minimize volatility by giving up the capital appreciation. In a sustained up market ATM calls don't make sense. Have I understood this correctly?