6 Canadian ETFs to Survive [& Profit From] a Stock Market Crash in 2026

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]The S&P 500 just hit a brand new all-time high today, as did the Nasdaq.

[00:00:04]And as the charts have moved absolutely vertical the past few weeks, ripping into uncharted territory, of course, some people are starting to get worried that we might be in a bubble. Investors like Michael Burry are betting against the AI bubble, and we've got Jim Cramer saying that there is no bubble. So, if we use the inverse Cramer approach, that means there probably is a bubble. And while no one really knows what's going to happen, in this video, I'm going to break down six of the best Canadian listed ETFs that can help you survive and potentially even profit from a stock market crash, in case it actually happens. Of course, this is not financial advice. Please do your own research and decide for yourself whether or not you think we're in a bubble. But, if we are in a bubble, these ETFs that I list will probably outperform. If the stocks continue ripping upwards, though, the ETFs that I mentioned here will not do as well compared to, for example, the Nasdaq index. Okay. So, if you're a Canadian investor and you're looking for options to help you potentially survive and even profit from a stock market crash, one of the things that you're going to be most concerned with is actually preserving your capital. So, the first ETF that I'm going to mention here, all of these, by the way, are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, so no issues for Canadian investors to access them. And this first ETF is basically just a high interest savings vehicle. It's called the Purpose High Interest Savings Fund, and the ticker symbol is PSA. Now, the TLDR on this is that you'll just get a low-risk yield on your cash deposits while you wait to see what happens with the market. And then, if there actually were to be a crash, then you could sell your shares of PSA and deploy them into whatever you think is going to be big coming out of the crash. This is a very, very low-risk fund. It's going to give you a much better interest rate than you would get, for example, if you deposit with a normal bank in Canada, and you just hold your deposits there. What does this ETF actually hold to pay out the yield? They are basically using short-term Bank of Canada Treasury bills. So, in terms of, you know, safety level for Canadian investors, this is basically as safe as you're going to get. It's a very simple product. It gives you access to a yield currently of 2.18%. Of course, this is going to be variable depending on the interest rates set by the Bank of Canada. But, if we look at the all-time stock chart of this, basically the actual shares of PSA always trade at around $50, and then you can collect your yield in the form of dividend payouts, which you can then reinvest in order to keep your snowball growing. So, that is the first and probably safest option on the list. If you think there's going to be a crash, preserving your capital with a high-yield savings fund like this could be a solid way to go.

[00:02:46]Next up, we're going to go into the Aggregate Bond Index. Now, this is not as safe as PSA because it's not just holding Canadian government, or rather Bank of Canada, Treasury bills. This index fund from ticker symbol ZAG, holds corporate bonds as well. So, as you can see, the yield on this is actually slightly higher than that of PSA. The management fees are actually a little bit less. However, there's much more volatility in the price of ZAG as a result of the fact that it's not solely investing in Canadian Treasury bills.

[00:03:21]So, what does this index fund hold to get that annualized yield of about 3.3%?

[00:03:26]If we click here on the holdings tab, we can see they do have a bunch of Canadian government bonds in there, but they've also got provincial government bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal government bonds. And the total allocation is displayed here on the screen. So, this is definitely still a very safe product that will help you earn a decent yield on your savings while you wait to see what happens with the market. If you think we're in bubble territory. Now, this index fund, if we just take a look at what happened during the 2020 market crash, you can see that in March the index fund actually popped up and performed quite well while the crash was actually occurring. So, from March to April that year, if you were holding ZAG, you would have done quite well. Now, since then we know the story, stock markets have ripped and so the price action of this bond fund has underperformed the market for sure. But, if you were holding it for that short period when markets were crashing during 2020, then you had a very solid performance compared to the -30 or -40% drawdowns that some of the other indexes saw back then. All right, next up, let's move into something else, commodities.

[00:04:34]And the main one that people usually want to hold during a crash is gold, although of course there are other options now. But, this is an example of an ETF that's listed in Canada. You can get a Canadian dollar hedge one or unhedged if you actually don't want to hold exposure to CAD at the same time.

[00:04:53]And what this ETF does is it seeks to actually just track the price of gold bullion. So, if we look at the holdings of the CGL ETF from BlackRock, it literally just holds gold, 99.4%.

[00:05:06]The remaining amount would just be a small amount of cash to manage positions. The management fee is slightly higher than the options mentioned so far at 0.5. And the only two things you really want to be concerned about before buying a gold bullion ETF is what's going to happen to the price of gold and do you want to have exposure to gold via CAD, Canadian dollars, or USD. Next up, let's move to another category of classic stock market crash ETFs that are good to hold, and that is utilities. Utilities or actually consumer staples. These are things that people need to buy regardless of the state of the economy. You have to pay for electricity and you need to, for example, go buy groceries to feed your family. And so, these types of ETFs tend to outperform in market crash situations because they're simply price inelastic.

[00:05:55]People have to pay for electricity and groceries no matter what happens, and that's why you see just a steady tick upwards even in situations where there is a bit of a market decline. So, yeah, XUT is the utilities index from iShares, and XST is the consumer staples index.

[00:06:11]As you can see, the consumer staples has more of just a steady climb upwards with a smaller dividend of 0.68%, but if we look at XUT, it's a little bit more volatile, has a stronger dividend payout at 3.46%.

[00:06:26]On the chart, this point right here is the crash from 2020, and on the consumer staples index fund XST, this is the point here on the chart of the market crash. It actually has just performed very steadily and strongly since then.

[00:06:40]Both of these options would be solid bets during a crash to preserve and safeguard capital until you can deploy it into something when you think it's time to go risk on again. If we look at the holdings of the utilities fund, this is a bunch of Canadian utilities companies, Fortis, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, etc. They've got the breakdowns here in the fact sheet. And the management fee of this one is 0.55% for the consumer staples index, the holdings are going to be largely just grocery firms. So, we've got Alimentation Couche-Tard, Loblaws, Metro. All of these companies represent businesses that will continue to make money even in a decline. And the fees of this one are the exact same. Now, all of these options that I've just mentioned from the cash fund all the way to the consumer staples fund are going to help you preserve and safeguard capital during a crash. Maybe even make a little bit of money in the months afterwards depending on which ETFs you're invested in. But, if you're actually more interested in making money, a lot of money during a crash, then these next two options are something to consider.

[00:07:44]However, they are very, very high risk, and if you don't time it absolutely correctly, you can get completely obliterated. So, what am I talking about? I'm talking about using ETFs listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that help you short global markets. So, for example, this ETF, SPXD from BetaPro, will actually short the S&P 500 using 2x leverage. Another option would be QQD or even SQQQ. These are -2x and -3x leverage bets on the Nasdaq, respectively. If there's going to be a bubble bursting in the current market, the Nasdaq is probably going to get hit the worst because all of the tech firm stock prices that have been exploding into uncharted territory over the past few months are going to be the first ones to come crashing back down to Earth. However, there is huge risk associated with a product like this, and like I said, if you don't time it correctly, you can get wrecked because over time, holding an ETF that uses leverage like this, you're going to see something called decay, which is that over longer periods of time, the price of these ETFs actually trend to zero.

[00:08:55]You're only going to want to really be holding these when and if there's a significant crash occurring. So, for example, on this chart here for SPXD, during the 2008-2009 crash, it absolutely ripped up. Over time, it trends to zero, but if we zoomed in on the chart here during the March 2020 crash, it also did quite well. So, this is what the chart looks like for the 3x leveraged short ETF from BetaPro on the Nasdaq. When the Nasdaq is ripping, this is not something that you want to be holding. If we do see a significant crash, however, this will go absolutely vertical. The management fee of these types of ETFs are higher than sort of vanilla ETFs that just track indexes regularly because they have to manage the leverage. Neither of these products are going to be good for people that aren't very experienced investors and that don't have supreme confidence in the timing of the crash because long-term holding something like this in your portfolio, you're just going to lose money. However, for small targeted bets or for high conviction advanced investors, products like these can help make a huge amount of money during massive market crashes. So, to recap, we've got most of the ETFs focused on preservation of capital, a few options that can outperform in periods of downturns like utilities funds, consumer staples, and then for those that want to try and maximize opportunities while holding a huge amount of risk on their portfolio, these negative 2x or 3x leverage ETFs from BetaPro can help you do that. So, if you're a Canadian investor looking for options of Canadian listed ETFs that might help you survive and even profit from a market crash, these are some examples. And let me know down below what you think is going to happen. Is the Nasdaq just going to continue vertical or are we due for a pretty major correction? Have a great day.