The Canadian real estate market has dodged predictions of a crash for more than a decade, with home prices seemingly rising every year. As a result, many people may believe that real estate is a better long-term investment that the stock market or a broad-based ETF.

Whenever a new investment idea or ETF offering becomes available, my reaction is always to wait and see how things go before investing.

Studies have shown that women make good investors. What's more, a study released by Fidelity Investments in 2021 found that investment accounts controlled by women outperformed those controlled by men by an average of 40 basis points over a 10-year period.

Yet the same study found that only 9% of women thought they made better investors than men.

Young people are often said to be the target market for ETFs, and many of them will have questions about this investing vehicle. For example, Meghan McCarthy, a third-year finance student at Bishop’s University, interned for me in Summer 2022. She had so many great questions about ETFs that we made our conversation a two-part series.

As young people embark on a lifetime of saving and investing, they need to understand the role of ETFs in the investment landscape. If we want to serve our clients’ children, we must be comfortable teaching the basics of investing.

I had the opportunity over the summer to hire Meghan McCarthy, a third-year finance student at Bishop’s University, as an intern. She told me she was curious about ETFs and didn’t really understand how they differed from mutual funds.

Here, I share her questions and my answers to help you understand what young investors need to know about ETFs.

Thematic ETFs are typically more volatile than those that track broad-based indexes. Long-term conviction is often required if these strategies are to pay off over time. In this article, I explain what to look for when selecting a thematic ETF.