I do know for a truth a few of you’re nonetheless sitting on loads of unused Tax-Free Financial savings Account (TFSA), Registered Retirement Financial savings Plan (RRSP), or First Residence Financial savings Account (FHSA) room, at the same time as we transfer by the second half of 2025. One frequent cause I hear is hesitation: each the U.S. and Canadian markets are sitting at all-time highs.

On the floor, that fear is smart. No person desires to really feel just like the final sucker shopping for in earlier than a crash. However keep in mind, we’re not speaking a couple of single inventory. We’re speaking in regards to the S&P 500 and the S&P/TSX 60, two of essentially the most longstanding and hard-to-beat fairness benchmarks on the earth. I can consider a dozen worse investments than proudly owning both, even at at present’s ranges.

That stated, I do know many traders received’t be simply satisfied. In the event you’re caught between the rock of record-high markets and the laborious place of wanting to place money to work, listed here are two sensible options.

Greenback value common into Index ETFs

For 2025, you might have $7,000 in new TFSA room, $8,000 in FHSA room, and as much as 18% of your earned revenue in RRSP room, as much as a max of round $31,500 relying in your wage. There’s no rule saying it’s worthwhile to dump all of it into the market directly.

Vanguard analysis exhibits that lump sum investing has traditionally outperformed greenback value averaging about two-thirds of the time. However that statistic glosses over the behavioural aspect.

In the event you put a month’s wage into the market and it drops 5% the subsequent day, the panic of seeing that loss can simply push you to promote, which defeats all the function. If that type of swing would possibly spook you, spreading contributions out often is the smarter selection.

For easy, broad publicity, greenback value averaging into BMO S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF (TSX:ZIU) or BMO S&P 500 Index ETF (TSX:ZSP) works effectively.

Most brokerages allow you to arrange computerized contributions out of your checking account and recurring ETF purchases, generally even fractional, to maintain the method utterly hands-off and emotion-free.

Spend money on worth ETFs

In the event you’re nonetheless not comfy shopping for at market highs, an alternative choice is to tilt towards worth. As a substitute of proudly owning the most important U.S. and Canadian shares by ZSP and ZIU, you would contemplate BMO MSCI USA Worth Index ETF (TSX:ZVU) and BMO MSCI Canada Worth Index ETF (TSX:ZVC).

These ETFs don’t simply weight corporations by dimension. They apply worth screens like price-to-book, price-to-forward earnings, and enterprise value-to-cash-flow from operations to pick and weight holdings. In observe, this implies you’re shopping for cheaper corporations relative to their fundamentals, fairly than piling into no matter inventory has the most important market cap.

The draw back is value and efficiency. ZVCU’s administration expense ratio is 0.33% versus 0.09% for ZSP, and ZVC expenses 0.40% in comparison with ZIU’s 0.18%. Each funds have additionally traditionally lagged their broad market counterparts. But when your major concern is valuations at all-time highs, worth ETFs are the closest factor to a “purchase low” technique accessible in a passive wrapper.