A rare expertise with bond funds
What we're looking at
This week's Cruncher series focuses on the largest fund families in Canada. How good are their most popular funds? Here, we look at TD Asset Management, the fund arm of Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Our screen
The 25 largest TD funds are listed here along with quartile rankings over a variety of time frames. Quartiles are the best way to measure a fund's performance. They divide funds in a category into four groups according to their returns, with first quartile being most desirable and fourth the basement. Fees are another important factor in evaluating funds. Here, we've included management expense ratios for each fund, plus the category average. Note: Big funds should be much lower than average because of economies of scale.
What we found
As was the case with CI Investments in Thursday's Cruncher, TD has consistently delivered top results in its most popular funds. The difference between the two companies is that TD's expertise extends to bond funds as well as equity funds, while CI's forte is more on the equity side.
Few mutual fund companies do bond funds well, but TD Canadian Bond, Short-Term Bond, Real Return Bond and Mortgage all have top quartile rankings over the long term. Oddly, TD Canadian Bond and Short Term Bond have fees that are well below average, while the mortgage and real return bond funds are on the high side of average. The dud in the bunch is TD High Yield Income, a high-yield bond fund with average costs and below-average returns over several time frames. The fund had a stellar 2009, though.
An interesting contrast in equity funds can be seen in TD Canadian Equity and TD Canadian Blue Chip Equity. The former has shown more aggressiveness than you'd expect in a bank fund, and it paid a price in 2008 with a glaring loss of 42 per cent. Still, the quartile rankings for this fund are impressive.
And then there's the blue chip equity fund, which sounds more like a bank's speed. It's been an uneven performer, and it costs more to own than TD Canadian Equity.
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| Top 25 TD Funds by Assets | ||||||||
| (May 31,2010) | Latest | Cat. Avg | (Quartile May 31, 2010) | |||||
| Name | CategoryAssets ($Mil) | MER | MER | 1-yr | 3-yr | 5-yr | 10-yr | |
| TD Canadian Bond | Canadian Fixed Income | 9,031.0 | 1.05 | 1.74 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Monthly Income | Canadian Equity Balanced | 4,391.2 | 1.40 | 2.66 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Dividend Growth | Canadian Dividend and Income Equity | 4,153.6 | 1.92 | 2.36 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Income Advantage Portfolio-I | Canadian Fixed Income Balanced | 4,069.3 | 1.56 | 2.21 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| TD Premium Money Market | Canadian Money Market | 3,744.2 | 0.32 | 0.89 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Dividend Income-I | Canadian Equity Balanced | 3,660.5 | 1.92 | 2.66 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| TD Canadian Money Market | Canadian Money Market | 3,527.4 | 0.61 | 0.89 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| TD Mgd Bal Growth Portfolio-I | Global Neutral Balanced | 3,068.7 | 2.41 | 2.48 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| TD Canadian Equity | Canadian Focused Equity | 3,033.5 | 2.07 | 2.78 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Short-Term Bond | Canadian Short Term Fixed Income | 2,820.6 | 1.05 | 1.52 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| TD Mgd Aggress Growth Port-I | Global Equity Balanced | 2,115.1 | 2.52 | 2.68 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| TD Mgd Inc&Mod Growth Portfolio-I | Global Neutral Balanced | 2,069.9 | 2.27 | 2.48 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| TD Mgd Income Portfolio-I | Canadian Fixed Income Balanced | 1,830.7 | 2.07 | 2.21 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| TD Mortgage | Canadian Short Term Fixed Income | 1,511.4 | 1.73 | 1.52 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| TD Real Return Bond | Cdn Inflation Protected Fixed Income | 1,487.0 | 1.42 | 1.07 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| TD Canadian Core Plus Bond-I | Canadian Fixed Income | 1,256.0 | 1.42 | 1.74 | 1 | |||
| TD High Yield Income | High Yield Fixed Income | 1,249.9 | 1.89 | 1.90 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| TD Canadian Blue Chip Equity | Canadian Focused Equity | 1,225.1 | 2.23 | 2.78 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| TD Balanced Growth | Canadian Equity Balanced | 1,154.0 | 2.11 | 2.66 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| TD Canadian Index | Canadian Equity | 836.4 | 0.84 | 2.52 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| TD Comfort Balanced Portfolio-I | Global Neutral Balanced | 796.7 | 1.90 | 2.48 | 2 | |||
| TD Canadian Value | Canadian Equity | 641.2 | 2.07 | 2.52 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| TD U.S. Large-Cap Value | U.S. Equity | 623.5 | 2.42 | 2.61 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |
| TD U.S. Blue Chip Equity | U.S. Equity | 593.1 | 2.42 | 2.61 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| TD Global Dividend-I | Global Equity | 581.1 | 2.42 | 2.76 | 3 | 3 | ||
| Source: Victor Tan, Globeinvestor.com |
