I have a friend who bought the BTC fund (QBTC, QBTC.U) before there was an ETF and still hasn't gotten around to making the switch to an ETF, so I did some research for them I thought I could share with you all. QBTC is not an ETF and has a high management fee which is no longer justifiable because there are ETFs available, however, if you simply sell the shares and make the change today you will lose about 2% because it trades at a discount.
You have two options if you don't want to lose the discount:
- Annual redemption is June 17th, for 100% cash value of the underlying NAV, but you must make the request through your broker and that must be processed in time for the May 15th cutoff date. (Check with your broker that they can do redemptions. I can confirm Questrade does redemptions.)
- You can wait for the discount to shrink and trade them at that time, looking at prior years, people try to arbitrage the discount by buying the shares just before redemption and then doing a redemption, oftentimes resulting in the discount being completely eliminated. Do note, the discount will shoot back up after May 15th once the arbitrage opportunity closes.
If you are going with the second option, you need to look up the BTC per share ratio and do the math yourself to determine the discount. They do have data on their main page you can also look at that shows the NAV and market price at 4:00pm (market close) on trading days, but I don't know how that varies intra-day.
Please note, this a taxable event if you hold it in a taxable account, even if doing the redemption route.
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