i have actually tried for ottogi! for korean funds its very tricky, you have to go through a korean broker or basically have business there, which is why fidelity has an asian office. i actually called numerous brokers, then even if that did work you are holding in a different type of account have foreign tax etc, just a pain. which brokers would allow korean holdings? i would actually be interested if you knew any, questrade, td, rbc DIY do not. many IB?

i agree why not buy outright i totally would but lets say we could, it is 1400 a share! same reason why you buy an etf or mutual fund, you cant afford outright to buy the share but through you at least have more exposure and are more diversified. I used that company just as one example, but there are plenty like that, stocks many forget about that managers and their team of analysts follow. in general though some of the major bank funds definitely underperform but some are decent. anyways though if an advisor that is pro etf were to say no i dont like mutual funds cause of this this and this, i could easily show him funds that are doing better than whatever index he is using unless it is tangerine fund vs sp500 etf. another example would be something like XHC or healthcare etf vs any of the 5 star rated health care funds, many of the actively managed health funds would have a better return.

anyways both are good, glad you broke it down like that though, with a fund like northstar its tricky cause theres no index (which i why i picked it lol) but i will do what you suggested on a fund with a benchmark like tsx60 and some other foreign etfs to see if its actually beating the index. mutual funds will definitely change quite a bit over next decade, the crap will be trimmed off the pile for sure.