My struggles with TD/Waterhouse and their RDSP continues on, with a little progress thanks to a commenter to my previous post RDSP and TD Aggravations who suggested I was mistaken that I could in fact deposit money into the account via the TD/Waterhouse Phone interface.
I phone on Monday and sure enough I can transfer money into the account, but as usual not in a straight forward way. First I had to transfer money into my main trading account, which I haven’t used in years, and then from that account I could transfer cash into the RDSP account. I was quite happy that I could do that, and it did seem to happen quite quickly, so I was ready to invest the funds, using the on line interface.

Time is on Your Side with an RDSP
However, that evidently, is a bit to straight forward for things, as I am blocked from doing anything on line with the account, other than look at the account balance. I may not have filled in the correct forms on this, not sure, but I must now call the TD/Waterhouse phone folks (again) to ask this very question, and if it is simply not allowed to trade on line, I will then find out whether this is something I can do on the phone. My guess would be, yes I can trade over the phone (or go into the bank), because (in my opinion) this means someone can put their Trading ID next to my purchases and get the commission from those trades (yes a very cynical view, and I will gladly retract it, if I can be proven wrong).
This means I will end up spending more time doing something that should have taken less than 5 minutes (so far I have spent over an hour fiddling with this thing, and my guess there is another 1/2 hour to be spent (at least) attempting to complete things by buying the securities I wish to add to this account).
Given this account is a very long term savings vehicle I am using a passive investment scheme (fashioned after one of the Canadian Capitalist’s original sleepy mini portfolios):
- TDB909 – TD Canadian Bond Index (e-Series) 33%
- TDB900 – TD Canadian Index (e-Series) 33%
- TDB902 – TD US Index (e-Series) 33%
A Small Difference
Now the original Sleepy Mini-portfolio included TDB911 – International Equities and I may add some of this to the mix with this addition of funds, depending on how I feel.
Disclaimer:This is not a sales pitch or endorsement for this method or these funds, it is simply supplied as an example where I think it is a good place for a passive investment strategy using Index Funds.
True.
And the benefit of the bond fund is if the stock market dives the bond fund bounces up. So long as you don’t panic and sell if the bond fund drops 20%, over time it should bounce back up anyway. A short term bond fund (maturities mostly 1-3 years) also has much less room to fall and likely won’t lose much value. But even a long term bond fund will be fighting valiantly not to fall and may do pretty well.
I just wanted to emphasize that bonds are only one fixed income security. GICs, money markets and cash are other ones. In the past, Bond funds could generate much better returns than GICs, money markets or cash, so they were preferred. Right now, though, bonds might be heading for a fall, so they might actually make less money than GICs. But no one can really predict that.
As you say, if you’re investing for the long term, and if you can avoid panic selling, bonds are fine. It’s still far preferrable to putting 100% into equities.
Good luck with the hassles. It sounds like it’s been a very trying time.