What is going on at the CIBC? I thought it was an unassuming member of the Canadian Big Banks club. They just quietly & profitably do their thing. Mostly in Canada. And without too much fuss.
Recently, however, they started hanging out with the guys at Avantis & now they’re doing crazy things together. Crazy good things, I think. And in true traditional old style banking fashion, they don’t seem to shout about it from the rooftops!

Earlier this year, the new line of CIBC Avantis ETFs were launched. This is one of the more exciting ETF product lines to hit the market in ages. The headline EFT of this suite is CAGE, an all equity fund with a global allocation similar to ETFs like ZEQT, XEQT, & others. Avantis is a fund company that focuses on building factor-tilted funds in the US. Canadian DIY investors had access to very few funds like this on the Canadian exchange. With this new CIBC Avantis relationship, we now have a full range to choose from. All trading here. All in Canadian dollars. Including some unique & very useful Canadian variants. CAGE, for example, has the Canadian home country bias typical of the standard Canadian all-equity type ETFs, but with the factor tilt built in.
CAGE was launched on March 18th this year & it’s already gathered over $900m in assets, in less than 6 months. Looks like there was some pent up demand for factor-tilted products, eh?

We’ll look at factor tilting another day but today, I wanted to talk about another ETF from this partnership. Last week, CIBC launched another new CIBC Avantis ETF, called CAKE.
Are you kidding me? CAKE!!!
What a great ticker! Yeah, I know there’s another one in the US, but this is Canada, eh!
CAKE is a factor-tilted take on the all-in-one balanced ETFs that typically have a 40% bond allocation. It’s built with the other CIBC Avantis factor-tilted equity ETFs launched earlier this year, but this one adds bonds. So it’s more like ZBAL, XBAL, etc. And the ticker is … CAKE!

Who named this ETF? This is just way more fun than we’re used to from our Big Banks!
What an opportunity for the marketing folk to go completely nuts, eh?

But maybe they won’t.
CAGE didn’t get much of a marketing push that I saw & look what’s happening with that. Maybe sitting back & letting us talk about it online will work for CAKE too. I know I’ll be buying a few shares of CAKE so that I can use the dividends to buy the other kind of cake.
I can’t help it, I just want to be able to say that I can have my CAKE & eat it too! LOL
Sorry!

Two other ETFs were launched the same day, including CAGR. Another fantastic ticker, I can’t believe no one had taken that one already. This is similar to the *GRO ETFs, with a 20% bond allocation. But with the factor tilt thing on the equity components. The letters may mean something slightly different here, but it’s still cool. And lastly, there’s CAGX, a globally diversified all-equity solution, but without the heavy home country bias. While it’s a bit like XAW & VXC, unlike those funds, it doesn’t totally X-out the Canadian market. Instead, it retains the small global market weight allocation of 3%. Do I feel a little more affinity for it because of that? I think I kinda do. Is that a clever marketing thing? 😉

This is good stuff all round by the CIBC. Fun & eminently practical at the same time. It will be interesting to see how these factor tilted funds compare to the broad market index type over time. While checking out the CIBC Avantis range of ETFs, I took a quick look at the more than 180 ETFs that now trade commission-free on the CIBC brokerage platform, Investor’s Edge. There are a few interesting choices in there. The money market ETF (CCAD), for example, seems to have a few basis points of advantage over some others out there. Ever since they started that CDR thing a few years back, CIBC is quietly doing things that might create a little extra flexibility for some investors. I hope they continue to surprise.

As usual, nothing here is a recommendation.
But what do you think of the factor strategies employed by these ETFs?

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Important – this is not investing, tax or legal advice, it is for entertainment & conversation-provoking purposes only. Data may not be accurate. Check the current & historical data carefully at any company’s or provider’s website, particularly where a specific product, stock or fund is mentioned. Opinions are my own & I regularly get things wrong, so do your own due diligence & seek professional advice before investing your money.