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Active Investing: An investing approach that aims to identify and invest in securities that may be mispriced by the market with the view of generating enhanced returns. It’s a strategy that can involve amongst other things, in-depth analysis of companies’ financial statements and significant understanding of various markets and companies from around the world.
Annual Report: The yearly record of a corporation or a mutual fund’s condition and performance, distributed to shareholders or investors.
Annualized Equivalent: An annualized rate of return is a cumulative return expressed as an equivalent annual compounded rate. Compounded rates of return include the effects of interest-on-interest. Asset Class: A type of investment such as stocks, bonds, real estate or cash.
Assets: The amount of money invested in a fund. Also referred to as Net Asset Value (NAV). NAV is calculated by adding the total value of the Fund's assets and subtracting the liabilities.
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Back-end Load (Deferred Sales Charge): Under a back-end load option, you may be required to pay a fee if you redeem your fund units within a specified number of years after your purchase. Some fund companies offer both a Standard Deferred Sales Charge option and a Low Load Deferred Sales Charge option (i.e. over a reduced number of years).
Benchmark Index: A standard against which the performance of a security or mutual fund can be measured. Generally, broad market indexes are used for this purpose.
Bond: A debt instrument promising to pay its holders periodic interest (or coupon) payments on a fixed amount of principal and maturity.
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Continuous Savings Plan (CSP) Amount: The amount you can automatically invest in your mutual funds on a weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly or quarterly basis. Once you set up a CSP, we’ll automatically transfer money from your bank account to buy units of the funds you choose.
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Date Started / Inception Date: The date that a fund became available for sale to investors.
Distribution Frequency: The amount of times during a year that a mutual fund pays distributions to unitholders. This is typically monthly, quarterly or annually.
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Eligibility: Indicates types of registered plans a mutual fund may be held in.
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Front-end Load (Sales Charge Option): Under a front-end load option, you pay a commission to your dealer when you buy units of a fund. The commission is usually negotiable between you and your dealer.
Fund's Percentage Return: The gain or loss you make on an investment over a set period of time. It is often stated as a percentage.
Fund Total Assets: The amount of money invested in a fund, also referred to as Net Asset Value (NAV). NAV is calculated by adding the total value of the Fund's assets and subtracting the liabilities.
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Last Distribution: The last date that a payout was made to unitholders of the net income or realized capital gains earned by a mutual fund.
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Management Expense Ratio (MER): The management expense ratio is based on the total expenses in the Statement of Operations expressed as an annualized percentage of the average net asset value of the funds.
Management Fee: Each fund pays us a fee for our management services. The management fee is a percentage of your investment and varies by fund. It does not include a fund’s operating expenses related to the operation of the fund.
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No-load: A no-load mutual fund does not require you to pay a commission when you buy, switch or redeem units of the fund.
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Operating Expenses: Operating expenses include audit and legal fees and expenses; fund accounting and valuation costs; filing fees; expenses related to preparing and distributing prospectuses and financial reports; interest or other borrowing expenses. Some of these expenses may be paid by the manager in return for a fixed administration fee or directly by the fund. Operating expenses are included in the management expense ratio (MER) of a fund.
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Passive Investing: An investing approach that provides access to a broad market, for example, through an index fund or exchange traded fund (ETF) that typically tracks the performance of a market index.
Portfolio Manager: Registered individual who manages the assets and expenses of a mutual fund according to the fund’s objectives.
Price (NAVPU): The market value of one unit of a mutual fund on a given day. Net Asset Value (NAV) is calculated by adding the total value of the Fund's assets and subtracting the liabilities. To find the net asset value per unit (NAVPU), the Fund's Net Asset Value is divided by the total number of units outstanding.
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Reinvestment Price: The price at which unitholders, who have opted to reinvest their distributions, buy additional units of a mutual fund with the distribution proceeds.
RIF (Retirement Income Fund): A plan that holds your retirement savings and provides income after you retire. There are rules about how much you take out each year.
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Sales Commissions (Load): You may be required to pay a commission when you buy (front-end load) or sell (back-end load) a fund.
Security: Investments or financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, debt securities and derivatives.
Semi-Annual Report: The (typically unaudited) record of a corporation or a mutual fund’s condition and performance that is distributed to shareholders or investors half way through the entity’s fiscal year.
Short-term Trading Fee: A fund may charge a short-term trading penalty (e.g. up to 2% of the amount that you redeem or switch) if you buy or switch and then redeem or switch securities of a fund within a specified number of days (e.g. 30 days) of purchasing or switching them. This penalty is meant to discourage short-term trading by investors because it may adversely affect all investors in a fund.
Simplified Prospectus: A legal document detailing a fund’s investment objective, financial highlights and fees.
Strategic Asset Allocation: An investing approach that maintains a predetermined mix of asset weightings within a portfolio. For example, a simple strategic allocation model might target a weighting of 60% in equities and 40% in bonds. Because the value of investments can change over time, the portfolio would be rebalanced regularly to maintain the preset asset weightings.
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Tactical Asset Allocation: An investing approach that aims to take advantage of perceived market opportunities by increasing a portfolio’s weightings in some assets and reducing other assets correspondingly. This approach may also include placing upper and lower bounds around asset class allocations. For example, for equities in a portfolio, a lower bound might be 40%, an upper bound 80% and a neutral weighting 60%.
Trailer Fees (Service Fees): Trailer fees are an ongoing type of service commission paid by fund companies to dealers and brokers for the continued advice and service they provide to investors. They are usually based on the value of the units of the funds that their clients hold.
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YTD Return: The period beginning January 1st of the current year up until today's date. For example, the year to date (YTD) return is 5%.
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