iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF
- Morningstar Medalist Rating: Silver
- Morningstar Rating: ★★★★
- Morningstar Category: Canadian Equity
- MER: 0.18%
IShares TSX/S&P 60 ETF XIU offers broad exposure to the Canadian stock market at a low price—a simple formula that few of its peers have been able to beat in the long run.
S&P builds the index that this ETF tracks by targeting the 60 stocks that best represent the Canadian large- and mid-cap market. That normally covers nearly 90% of the market but still makes for a top-heavy portfolio. The 10 largest holdings represented 43%-52% of the portfolio over the past 10 years. That’s a higher share than the category average, but the pedigree of the franchises atop the portfolio dials back firm-specific risk.
This strategy weights stocks by market capitalization—a cost-efficient and proven approach. Market-cap weighting channels the market’s collective view on the relative value of each holding, allowing the fund to coast on the research of the crowd without incurring a lot of expenses. It also requires little turnover—a benefit that’s enhanced further by index buffers that are designed to cut back on trading and the costs that come with it.
Save for its larger market-cap orientation, this fund looks a lot like the average portfolio in the Canadian equity Morningstar Category. Mimicking the category norm indicates that this fund captures most of the opportunity set available to its active peers. That amplifies the impact of its cost advantage, which is a reliable engine for category-relative performance.
Sector-level concentration creeps into this portfolio. Heavy stakes in financials (37% of assets as of August 2025) and energy (16%) tend to soak up about half the portfolio. These biases reflect the composition of the Canadian market rather than a flaw in its target index. Still, the fund can suffer when those sectors (or industries within them) face challenges.
The fund outperformed its average peer by 1.51 percentage points annualized over the past 10 years through August 2025. The fund’s return fluctuated more than its average peer during that period, but its risk-adjusted performance was still higher. Low fees, low turnover, and little cash allow the fund to capture the Canadian stock market’s performance with minimal drag.
