CAGE vs XEQT: what to know about Canada's new Avantis all-equity ETF

Short answer: CAGE.TO is a new all-equity, globally diversified ETF from CIBC, sub-advised by Avantis. It uses a rules-based active strategy that tilts toward value, smaller companies, and profitable companies. The management fee is 0.28%, which sits about 8 basis points above XEQT after BlackRock’s December 2025 fee cut. The full MER isn’t published yet because CAGE is still in its first year of inception. It’s a different bet than XEQT, not better or worse.

For years, the Canadian DIY crowd has been listening to Rational Reminder episodes about Avantis funds and then realizing the easy options were all U.S.-listed. You could replicate the strategy with a few separate funds, or you could just buy XEQT and move on. Most people picked the second one.

That changed on March 18, 2026, when CIBC and Avantis listed CAGE.TO on the TSX. One ticker, 100% equities, globally diversified, with the Avantis methodology baked in. The Rational Reminder podcast covered the launch on episode 401. The Reddit threads started that week. So the question worth answering is what CAGE actually is, how it differs from XEQT, and what you’d want to think about before treating it as a swap.

This is not financial advice. I’m sharing what I’ve learned from my own research, and your situation might be different from mine. Fund compositions, MERs, and allocations change over time. Always check the current details before making any decisions.

What CAGE actually is

CAGE.TO is an ETF managed by CIBC, with Avantis Investors (a unit of American Century) as the sub-advisor. CIBC handles the Canadian wrapper and distribution. Avantis runs the strategy. It’s structured as a fund-of-funds, meaning CAGE itself holds a basket of underlying Avantis equity ETFs covering U.S. stocks, international developed markets, emerging markets, and Canadian stocks.

It listed on the TSX on March 18, 2026, trades in Canadian dollars, and is built to be a complete all-equity portfolio in a single ticker. 100% equities, globally diversified. The management fee is 0.28%, which sits a touch above XEQT’s MER after BlackRock cut XEQT’s management fee in December 2025. The full MER for CAGE isn’t published yet, because regulators don’t allow it in a fund’s first year of inception. Once it’s disclosed, expect it to land a few basis points above the management fee.

If you want the standalone picture before the comparison, the CAGE ETF guide walks through exactly what CAGE.TO holds, its fee, and how the Avantis factor strategy works.

Worth flagging up front: CAGE is actively managed, not an index fund. It’s rules-based active, which means the rules are public and consistent rather than someone making discretionary calls week to week, but it isn’t tracking a published index the way XEQT is. If you’re new to this distinction, the not-all-ETFs-are-passive guide is a useful detour.

Why people are paying attention

Avantis has built a real reputation in the U.S. since launching in 2019. AVUV (small-cap value) and AVGE (their all-equity fund) became staples in the Bogleheads-adjacent corner of the internet, and the Rational Reminder community in Canada has been talking about them for years. The hosts have interviewed Eduardo Repetto, the chief investment officer at Avantis, more than once.

The problem in Canada was access. You could buy the U.S.-listed Avantis funds in a USD account, deal with the currency conversion, and stitch together your own factor portfolio. That’s a lot of moving parts for the average DIY investor who just wants one ticker and an automatic contribution. Building an Avantis-style portfolio in Canada wasn’t impossible, it was just enough friction that most people didn’t bother.

CAGE closes that gap. One Canadian-listed ticker, no FX conversion, the Avantis methodology applied across global equities. That’s the thing that’s new. The interest isn’t really about CIBC, it’s about Avantis showing up in a form Canadian investors can actually use without thinking too hard.

What “factor tilt” means in plain English

This is the part that matters. Without it, the rest of the comparison doesn’t make sense.

XEQT is broadly cap-weighted. It owns the global stock market roughly in proportion to size, so the biggest companies (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and so on) get the biggest weights. That’s the standard index-fund approach.

CAGE owns a similar global universe but deliberately tilts away from pure cap weighting. It applies three tilts:

• Value. Cheaper stocks (low price relative to book value, earnings, or cash flow) get more weight than they would in a cap-weighted index. The bet is that paying less for a dollar of fundamentals tends to pay off over long stretches.
• Size. Smaller companies get more weight than their market cap alone would give them. Not “small-cap only,” just less concentration in mega-caps.
• Profitability. Companies that are reliably profitable get included or overweighted; chronically unprofitable ones get filtered out or down-weighted.

This isn’t new. The academic work goes back to Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, with later contributions from Robert Novy-Marx on the profitability side. Decades of research suggest these factors have delivered higher returns than the broad market over very long horizons.

The honest caveat is that “very long” can mean a long time. Factor-tilted portfolios can underperform broad cap-weighted indices for ten years or more at a stretch. That’s not a bug or a sign the strategy is broken. It’s part of how factor returns work. Anyone considering CAGE has to be willing to sit through a decade of trailing XEQT and not flinch. That’s a real ask.

CAGE vs XEQT side-by-side

Here’s the comparison row by row. A couple of cells say “not yet published” because CAGE has only weeks of trading history and CIBC hasn’t released full disclosure on every line item yet.

The cost line still matters. Until December 2025, XEQT’s MER was a noticeable step lower than what most factor-tilted Canadian alternatives charged. After the fee cut, the gap narrowed a lot, but CAGE’s 0.28% management fee still runs about 8 basis points above XEQT’s MER. That’s small in dollar terms (about $80 a year on a $100,000 portfolio), but it isn’t zero. So this is a small “pay a bit more for the tilt” decision, plus a strategy decision and a track-record decision.

The geographic split is where CAGE will probably differ in practice. Avantis funds typically hold many more individual names than a cap-weighted index, because tilting toward small and value pulls in companies the cap-weighted version barely includes. Whether the country weights end up close to XEQT’s or noticeably different will depend on how Avantis applies its screens at the country level. That detail will be clearer once CIBC publishes the full holdings breakdown.

If you want a side-by-side of the more established all-in-one options that CAGE is now joining, I covered the XEQT/VEQT/XGRO comparison separately. CAGE is also one of eight funds in the broader Avantis CIBC lineup, which I walk through in the Avantis CIBC ETFs guide.

How CAGE compares to other all-equity options

A few notes on how CAGE sits next to the other one-ticker all-equity choices that come up in the same conversation.

CAGE vs AVGE. AVGE is the U.S.-listed Avantis all-equity fund and the closest U.S. cousin to CAGE. Same Avantis methodology, different wrapper. AVGE trades on a U.S. exchange in USD, with U.S. tax treatment on distributions and the FX friction Canadians know well. CAGE is the Canadian-listed equivalent: same factor approach, CAD-denominated, no currency conversion, simpler tax behaviour for Canadian accounts. If you’ve been holding AVGE in a USD account, CAGE is the more straightforward home for the strategy.

CAGE vs VEQT. VEQT is Vanguard’s all-equity all-in-one, cap-weighted like XEQT but with a slightly more Canada-heavy split. The decision is the same shape as CAGE versus XEQT (factor-tilt active versus broad cap-weighted indexing), with a smaller cost gap since VEQT’s MER is around 0.24%. The full breakdown is in the CAGE vs VEQT comparison.

CAGE vs XGRO. XGRO is not a direct comparison. It’s BlackRock’s 80/20 growth fund, not 100% equities. If you’re considering CAGE, you’ve already decided on all-equity, which puts the choice in the XEQT and VEQT space rather than XGRO.

What to consider before adding CAGE

Five things worth thinking about, in rough order of how often they bite people.

1. Tracking error vs the broad market is the whole point, not a flaw. If you pick CAGE, you’re signing up for stretches where it underperforms XEQT, possibly by a lot. That’s the strategy doing what it’s supposed to do. The risk isn’t the underperformance itself, it’s panic-selling during one of those stretches and crystallizing the loss. If watching CAGE trail XEQT for three or five years would push you to swap, you probably shouldn’t start.

2. CAGE itself has weeks of Canadian track record. Avantis has a U.S. history, but the Canadian-listed wrapper is brand new. Things like distribution patterns, tracking of the underlying U.S.-listed funds, and how the fund-of-funds layer behaves in practice are still being established. None of this is necessarily a problem, it’s just unproven in the Canadian listing.

3. Factor premia are a probability, not a promise. The academic case for value, size, and profitability is strong, but premia can compress, disappear for a generation, or behave differently than they did in past data. The honest framing is that factor investing has historically rewarded patient holders. It hasn’t guaranteed anything, and the people running Avantis would say the same.

4. Fund-of-funds structure adds a layer. XEQT is also a fund-of-funds, so this isn’t unique to CAGE. But fund-of-funds wrappers can add subtle complexity around distributions, foreign withholding tax, and how fees are reported. With a fund this new, the practical tax behaviour will reveal itself over the next year or two of distribution cycles.

5. Tax behaviour in non-registered accounts isn’t fully proven yet. In a TFSA or RRSP, this matters less. In a non-registered account, how the fund distributes capital gains, how foreign withholding tax flows through, and how the underlying U.S.-listed Avantis ETFs interact with Canadian tax treatment are all things you’ll only really see after a full tax year. Worth waiting for that data if you’re putting CAGE in a taxable account.

If you’re working through these kinds of considerations across any new ETF, the how to pick ETFs in Canada guide walks through the broader checklist.

Who this might be for

This is observation, not recommendation.

CAGE makes the most sense for people who already understand factor investing, have a long horizon (think twenty-plus years), and want one ticker rather than building an Avantis portfolio out of three or four U.S.-listed funds. If you’ve been holding AVUV and AVGE in a USD account and dealing with Norbert’s Gambit every contribution, CAGE simplifies your life considerably.

It also fits people who have a real conviction that the factor premia are worth the volatility and the multi-year stretches of underperformance. “Real conviction” meaning you can articulate why you believe it, not “I heard about this on a podcast last week.” Conviction held lightly tends to evaporate the first time the strategy lags the index.

For everyone else, XEQT is doing exactly what it was doing yesterday. You don’t need to do anything. The launch of a new ETF is not a signal that your current setup is broken. The most common mistake when a new product gets attention is to assume you should already be in it. That’s almost never true.

Frequently asked questions

What is CAGE.TO?

CAGE.TO is an all-equity, globally diversified ETF managed by CIBC, with Avantis Investors as the sub-advisor. It listed on the TSX on March 18, 2026, trades in Canadian dollars, and uses a rules-based active strategy that tilts toward value, smaller companies, and profitable companies. It is structured as a fund-of-funds, holding a basket of underlying Avantis equity ETFs across U.S., international developed, emerging, and Canadian stocks.

What is CAGE’s MER?

CAGE’s management fee is 0.28%. The full MER, which adds operating expenses on top of the management fee, has not been published yet because Canadian regulators don’t require it in a fund’s first year. Once disclosed, expect it to land a few basis points above 0.28%. For comparison, XEQT’s MER is roughly 0.20% after BlackRock’s December 2025 fee cut.

What are CAGE’s top holdings?

CAGE is structured as a fund-of-funds, so its direct holdings are a small set of underlying Avantis equity ETFs covering U.S., international developed, emerging, and Canadian stocks. The look-through holdings, meaning the actual companies inside those underlying funds, span hundreds of names with deliberate weighting toward value, smaller, and profitable companies rather than pure cap-weighting. Specific country weights and a full top-holdings breakdown have not been published yet. CIBC is expected to disclose that detail as the fund matures.

Is CAGE actively managed?

Yes, in a specific sense. CAGE is rules-based active, meaning the rules are public and applied consistently rather than a portfolio manager making discretionary calls week to week. The rules tilt the portfolio toward value, smaller companies, and profitable companies. It is not tracking a published index the way XEQT is. The not-all-ETFs-are-passive guide walks through the distinction in more detail.

Can I hold CAGE in a TFSA or RRSP?

Yes. CAGE trades on the TSX in Canadian dollars, so it can be held in any standard Canadian registered account: TFSA, RRSP, FHSA, RESP, RDSP, RRIF, and LIRA, as well as in non-registered accounts. As with any equity fund, the account type affects how distributions and capital gains are taxed. In a TFSA or RRSP the distinction matters less. In a non-registered account, CAGE’s distribution behaviour will be clearer after a full tax year.

How big is CAGE?

CAGE listed in March 2026, so AUM is small and changes weekly. Expect that to grow as the fund builds a track record. Size on day one isn’t a reason to avoid the fund, but the wrapper hasn’t yet been through full distribution cycles or material market drawdowns.

Does CAGE pay distributions?

Yes. As an equity ETF, CAGE distributes dividends and any realized capital gains from the underlying funds. CIBC has confirmed CAGE distributes quarterly, the same cadence as XEQT. The first full year of CAGE distributions will reveal the pattern, including how foreign withholding tax flows through the fund-of-funds structure.

Bottom line

CAGE is a real product from credible managers, available in a wrapper that didn’t exist in Canada before. It’s different from XEQT in a specific, intentional way: it makes a long-term bet on factors instead of holding the market by size. Whether that bet is worth making depends entirely on whether you believe in the factor thesis and can actually hold through years where it doesn’t work. If you don’t have a strong view on that, you probably don’t need CAGE. If you do, it’s a reasonable way to express it in one ticker.