ING Direct Streetwise Funds – Start saving your money
Since January 2008 ING Direct has been offering Canadians their own name brand of mutual funds which they call their “Streetwise” Mutual funds. It is my humble opinion this new portfolio of mutual funds have brought Canadians a fantastic investment opportunity that has not yet been available until now. In this article I hope to resolve the following questions:
- What are ING Direct Streetwise Mutual Funds?
- How do ING Direct Streetwise Mutual funds differ from other fund offerings?
- Most importantly, how ING Direct Streetwise funds investment choice?
What is a Streetwise Mutual Fund?
They are 1 of 3 mutual funds currently offered by ING Direct Canada. These funds invest exclusively in the main Canadian market indexes; specifically Canadian Bonds (DEX Universe Bond Index), the Canadian market (S&P/TSX 60), the US market (S&P 500) and International Stocks (Morgan Stanley Capital Inc. EAFE).
As stated there are three funds Income, Balanced, and Growth each having progressively higher risk then the previous with correspondingly higher potential rates of returns. One thing to keep in mind when deciding on a fund is the closer you are to when you plan on spending or needing the money the money the less risk you may want to take. So if you were planning on spending the investment in the near future you’d probably want to invest in the Income Fund which provides a steady rate of return, or if your time line was more like 20 to 30 years away you’d probably consider the ING Direct Growth Fund where the risk is much higher. This leaving the ING Direct balanced fund somewhere in the middle between the each of 2 other ING Direct Street Wise funds. Note that there are many other factors to selecting your level of acceptable risk and this only takes one into account.
How does The ING Direct Streetwise Mutual funds differ from other fund offerings?
Many other banks and fund companies also offer index funds this is true. The two biggest advantages that most advocates of index funds are as follows:
- Index funds have historical performed better then managed funds
- They have lower management fees then managed funds so you keep more of the income
What this means is that the choice for the average person to invest in mutual should more or less be a no brainer and that they should choose to invest exclusively in Index Funds. However, you still would want to get proper expose to the various markets. This is where the ING Direct Streetwise Funds come in not only do they invest in Indexes they already invest in several so you don’t have to buy a bunch of different ones.
Most importantly, how are ING Direct Streetwise Mutual funds my best investment choice?
As stated already not only are the ING Direct Street wise funds invested solely in indexes they also invest in various different indexes. The degree that each of the three funds invest in each index is continuously maintain meaning that once you start investing in one of these funds you don’t have to do anything unless you decide that you want to change you level of risk (ie buy into a different fund).
On top of this ING Direct Canada has put a cap on the management expense ration (MER) to 1% (which at the time of writing was actually 0.8%) this amount is actually as good or better then what is being offered by most other index funds that invest in only one index.
To my knowledge the only other good option are TD e-series or iShares ETF.
The TD e-series portfolio offers basically the same option as the ING Direct Streetwise funds, however they’re MER is a bit higher so your returns would likely be lower. But if you want the convenience of dealing with a major bank and possibly a better online banking system, you might decide on it instead.
As for iShares they do not actually offer mutual funds but rather what are called ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) which is a fancy way of say you buy mutual funds through the stock market. It is more work to buy them and you can only invest in one index at a time but at an MER of around 0.17% it could be worth the work.
If ING Direct Canada Street Wise funds seem like a good investment for you, you can sign up with ING Direct Canada using a special orange key code that will give you a bonus $25.00 just for signing up. One condition, your minimum deposit has to be at least $100.00. Want to find out more? Check out this website www.orangekey.info It has a working ING Direct orange key code that is guaranteed to work. Even if you don’t want to invest in the ING Direct Streetwise funds, set up a checking account or savings account and claim your bonus cash. Get your orange key now! And start saving your money!
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