Portfolio Update April 2025

Video Blog

Major Indices VS My RRSP

April saw the fear uncertainty and doubt somewhat find an equilibrium. With the SCHD reconstitution happening on the last week of March some investors were not immediately pleased with the new top holdings in the ETF. I’m not worried about it as this has been known to happen before. Luckily I was able to pick up some more shares at near bottom prices.

Ticker	Index	2025-04-01	2025-04-30	Percentage Gain
.INX	S&P 500	5633.07	5569.06	-1.14%
.IXIC	Nasdaq 100	17449.89	17446.34	-0.02%
.DJI	Dow Jones	41989.96	40669.36	-3.15%
TX60	TSX 60	1503.5	1494.57	-0.59%

Ticker	RRSP ETFs	2025-04-01	2025-04-30	Percentage Gain
VDY	FTSE Index CAD	49.43	48.91	-1.05%
XAW	Many Indexes	44.16	42.59	-3.56%
SCHD	Subset of Dow	27.87	25.82	-7.36%
VTI	Total US Market	275.77	272.82	-1.07%

My Moves

April was a very busy month which marks the 3rd highly active month for us. I decided to deploy some of my “safety” funds into the growth opportunities once again. I also sold a small chunk of CASH which is our joint savings / emergency fund. This will be needed as April and May are when many of our big annual expenses come due. Things like life insurance, property tax and it’s also generally when we get our spring service down on our car.

This year we were informed that our spark plugs needed to be switched which was an additional $400. It is kind of funny actually when I was at the dealership they said $150 in labour and then parts. I asked what the parts were worth and was told it would be 4 times anywhere from $15 to $55. Long story short ours were $51 each 😢. Oh well this is why we build some buffer into our budget.

Finally, our tax returns did indeed come through, which, was great as the market hadn’t recovered too much. This year I decided to take my time and spread the money out over a few days just in case we had another daily flash crash/drop.

TFSA Buys & Sells

• I teased this in the previous section but I moved our joint savings from SPLT back to CASH for safety
  • At time of writing (hindsight) this move may have been unnecessary but it’s not worth the risk imo
• SOLD more PREF and added to AMD, GOOG and a smaller amount to QQCL
• BOUGHT:
  • VFV
  • GOOG
  • GDV
  • HXQ

I allocated a portion of my tax return to zero-out my LoC which was used for BANK. It’s funny part of me was thinking of actually increasing my BANK position with more funds from the LoC when it was down around $7.20, unfortunately I missed the $7.08 day, however I decided to hold off for now. Over the next few months if it drops back below $7.25 I will likely increase my position by 25 to 50%.

TFSA Breakdown

• SPLT is my wife and I’s joint emergency fund.

Positions I am thinking about consolidating are down to one at the moment:

• T Still thinking of selling out of this one and increasing XEI and/or BANK

Breaking out each Account

RRSP Buys

As we had just opened the spousal account last month and with the market continuing to drop I decided to allocate my typical monthly contribution to the spousal once again. We decided to increase both of the current holdings BANK and QQCL.

Tax return wise I bought SCHD and a smaller amount of VTI. As teased earlier I almost got the perfect bottom on SCHD not that you know that at the time.

RRSP Breakdown

• percentages are calculated based on current market value, USD is converted to CAD based on google finance rate

Dividend Increases and Decreases

• GOOG raised dividends 5% after a stellar Q1 2025 earnings

Fear and Greed Index

We are back in the middle of fear and the AAII investor sentiment survey has ticked up a bit since the end of March beginning of April. Numbers wise 61.9% of people surveyed were bearish for the weekending April 2nd 2025 and only 55.6% weekending April 23rd.

Wrap Up

That’s all for this months review thank you for reading!

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