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SA Editor's note: This article has been disputed - read the critique.
• • •
When so many are selling something so hard – perhaps you should go and sell rather than buy.
The ETF Sales Pitch
Over the past few years there’s been movement to convince as many folks as possible to buy and hold Exchange Traded Funds – more commonly known by the acronym of ETF.
And seemingly every fund management company has come out of the woodwork with ETFs that are supposed to provide investors with an easy means of investing in just about any particular market sector, index or even themes.
Over the past several months, these supposedly index-linked investment vehicles have been repackaged – and with the permission of US regulators, have become so flexible and in some cases managed – that they’re not even indexed to anything.
And whether an ETF is linked to an index or not, it can of course also supposedly be created to perform at a multiple of an underlying basket of securities or index – or, even to perform in the opposite direction.
Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent on advertising and pitches to buy into this supposedly new form of investing.
The idea is that rather than having to actually pick out stocks to buy or sell – you can just buy an ETF and have it all done for you.
And, so the pitches go, ETFs are really much cheaper than investing in a mutual fund – closed end or open end – because all the managers have to do is put together the ETF based on an index and let the market price them. So, it's almost like investing for free.
No wonder that so many investors – even supposed professionals – buy and hold ETFs across many markets.
Because – if you look at the sales literature – they’re cheap, easy and the modern way to run a portfolio.
Except that they’re not.
What the Pitchmen Don't Tell You
To understand ETF shortcomings, let’s look first at the core of what makes for an ETF.
An Exchange Traded Fund might have a great name on the outside – but most investors will never, ever be able to find out what’s actually inside them.
That’s because the folks that build and run ETFs will only release what’s really in them to the specialist traders that sign on to make markets in them.
While ETFs trade on exchanges and folks think that they’re buying or selling at the net asset values of the moment – the truth can be far and away different.
That’s because throughout the day, few folks actually know what’s inside the ETF’s underlying assets, which are embodied by what are called “Creation Units.” Each Creation Unit is what is used to deliver an ETF share to the market. And, each share of an ETF actually is just a share in the underlying real basket of assets.
Those assets can vary widely throughout the trading day and are not usually made up of actual stock shares – but rather a series of options, swaps, forwards and a host of other derived securities, in amounts and proportions that only the specialists and the managers of the ETF know about.
Traders in the know love these things because they get to trade against the underlying basket of assets. They get to buy, sell, short and everything else that can enable them to arbitrage against the secret baskets of assets behind every ETF.
So, while you might think that you are buying or selling an ETF at the real value of the index that it’s supposed to be linked to – you really will never, ever know for sure.
And when it comes to markets not priced up to the moment – say, foreign stocks or bonds – not only do you have the uncertainty of the underlying murky mix of derivatives that really back up an ETF, but you also have the uncertainty of what the supposed basket of assets might be priced at.
In past years, I’ve seen some Asian ETFs trade at premiums and discounts amounting to over 30 percent away from what should be their real market prices.
So, not so easy, are they?
But it gets worse.
Severe Underperformance Against Benchmarcks and Alternative Vehicles
While the performances of ETFs can track underlying indexes – they often underperform. And when you match up many ETFs against closed-end funds focused on the same or very similar markets, ETFs tend to lag.
One prime example can be seen in a past recommendation in the Brazilian market that worked out quite well for my subscribers years ago. I recommended buying and owning a closed-end fund called The Brazil Fund (BZL) for years – selling it in 2006. The returns for that fund, held for 5 years, were just shy of 300 percent.
Now, if you had been reading my stuff back then, and instead of buying my fund recommendation, went along with an ETF supposedly tracking the Brazilian market trading as the Brazil iShare (EWZ) – you would have made money – but with less than half of the return of the fund and the market.
This lag in performance is bad enough for non-leveraged ETFs – but can get even worse for leveraged ETFs and more so for ETFs that supposedly move in an opposite fashion to an underlying index or basket of assets.
Many folks have been sold the bill of goods that if they buy an ETF that’s supposedly short a particular part of the market, they’ll either have a hedge for their portfolio or, even better, they just might make a buck if trouble hits.
Over the past year one market in particular that did get hit was of course US banks.
The ETF that is supposed to track the opposite of the KBW Bank Index (KBE) – the leading index for US banks – is run by ProShares, trading under the symbol of SKF.
Over the past year, the KBW Bank index has lost over 63 percent. And how did the short ETF fund do? Perhaps a little gain? Nope.
It lost 50 percent. That’s right – the ETF that’s supposed to trade and be valued in the opposite direction of banks lost almost as much as the index that it was supposed to short.
Or how about when you wanted to trade oil on its recent near term rally over the past few months?
The US Oil ETF (USO) that’s supposed to track the performance of the underlying price of West Texas Intermediate Crude is pitched as the way to cash in on that particular commodity.
So, while crude has nearly doubled since later February, the ETF has lagged big – by nearly 62 percent.
Another Enemy of ETFs: Time
The key for all of the ETFs is that the longer the period of time you look at their performance, the worse they match up against their objectives. If you were to look at any of the above ETFs on any given day, there is a greater propensity for them to track what they’re supposed to track. But as you move out from 1 day to 2 days and so on – the correlation begins to break down very quickly.
The lesson here is that ETFs can make for great trading fodder for those who are privy to the real underlying asset mix of the underlying creation shares. That's how – and by whom – real money is made in ETFs.
For the rest of us mere mortals, we’d all be better served to steer our portfolios away from the pitches of Wall Street and instead follow the move by one of the biggest creators of ETFs – Barclays – which earlier this year dumped its ETF fund operations.
Disclosure: None
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This article has 28 comments:
I assume from what I read that you believe all ETF are bad because you dont provide any positives for any ETF, you dont say what is the better alternative, Mutual funds and or stocks and why they would be. You dont say why Barclays dumped its ETF portfolio. How do you expect anybody to learn or undestand anything about this subject when you provide a prejudicial one sided opinion. Most of what you say can be said to some degree about many Mutual Funds and as far as inidividual stocks go the retail investor is just as at risk from bogus financials and market manipulation tactics by market makers and financial institutions.
He criticizes the level of portfolio disclosure of ETFs, yet no other fund category publishes DAILY holdings with no lag. You know significantly less about what's in any of the other fund categories.
He observers that a few funds have performance issues -- what category doesn't? Individual stocks have their own problems, since we "mere mortals" usually get levels of trading execution in single name stocks ranging from mediocre to downright horrible. He also doesn't point out that one of the reasons that ETFs in these small sectors are prohibited by US law from fully replicating the index. This might be a reason not to buy some of the more specialized ETFs, but it doesn't support his "scam" argument.
He then points to Barclays' dumping of iShares as an indication that ETFs are bad. Barclays had no choice but to sell; they desperately need the money to survive. The author is smart enough to know this. It has nothing to do with their view of ETFs.
The funny thing is that this gentleman has a couple of good points buried in the rubbish that is this article. Namely, not all ETFs are the same, you need to look at their long-term track record against their index, and some very exotic ETFs are probably not good as long-term investments. (I happen to agree with him the leveraged and inverse ETFs are a bad idea). But that doesn't mean that "ETFs are a scam."
I agree that there are some ETFs which are not worth investing in and Seeking Alpha and its contributors have pointed out over the months which ones were doubtfull even to to the point that one should not trade ETFs if the volumes were too low ..... and there are many of those.
In the end there will be a hardcore of solid names just like the mutual fund sector.
Not a great article I am afraid living in the UK but investing in the US markets.
I have NEVER been recommended anything other than a fund by my money manager, and ALWAYS his first recommendation is a fund with a front-end loaded fee. Funny how since I've pulled my funds out of his management that I'm outperforming him by double percentage points. Guess what? I'm not in funds. I'm in ETFs and stocks.
The movement towards ETFs has NOT been driven by money managers. It's been driven by the movement of common folk to take over their own money management. ETFs provide a low-cost, low-fee alternative to mutual funds that, when considering load and management fees, is a superior alternative.
This may indeed be "the other side of the story", but it is coming from an author who may have an agenda to go with the story. We know what he's against, but what does he recommend? Will he go on to recommend mutual funds in upcoming articles? Or stocks? If funds, then he's shown his true colors and you can safely ignore this article.
Have you ever heard of an iNAV? They are available to all mortals who only have access to Yahoo! or Google finance. Most ETF providers also disclose fund holdings and index constituents daily.
Valid criticisms of leveraged ETFs (SKF) should not be applied to the whole ETF universe.
Poor article
finance.yahoo.com/echa...;range=1y;compare=^gsp...
On Jun 05 12:15 PM teleman wrote:
> I buy index ETF's. Here is SPY vs. the S&P%)):
>
> finance.yahoo.com/echa...;range=1y;compare=^gsp...
I would LOVE to see an eviscerating critique of ETFs - that WOULD be informative to any any contrarian and every investor - but this is pure blather.
The mutual fund industry has its gunsights on the rapidly growing ETF industry, which is stealing their assets and hurting their bottom-line. Look for many, many more articles in blogs just trashing ETFs with all sorts of slanted & manipulative premises ... and very little legitimate criticism?
THAT says alot.
On Jun 05 06:42 AM Chezfrederick wrote:
> Excellent article, well written and 100% true... I especially liked
> the title... ETFs are good for TRADING period.
On Jun 05 03:24 PM American in Paris wrote:
> His article is rubbish. He is obviously bitter because he cannot
> compete against ETFs. Vanguard introduced ETFs into its portfolio
> because it enabled its investors to reduce their costs. By the way,
> he has a right to be bitter, but not to mislead readers with babble
> talk.
SKF is a 2x (double) leveraged short ETF that inversely tracks the Dow Jones US Financials Index, not the KBW Bank Index. Leveraged ETF deliver on a one day basis and are not intended to be held for any length of time: they are traders' tools. And you can't even get the index it tracks right: maybe it doesn't matter to you!
If the integrity of the data used is incorrect then the premise and conclusions are flawed too.
You don't like ETF, but inaccurate writing about them doesn't help your cause.
This book is a good start he covers the creation/redemption process very well. The next place you can go is to... let's say....iShare's website and (take your time) click all through their site....they have some AWESOME information. You know they even have a spot in there on how you can actually find out what is in the ETF. No kidding...it is in there. I don't want to get into the premium-discount model here and how the ARBs take care of that for ETF users. I'll save that for ETFs 201
You wrote: "Those assets can vary widely throughout the trading day and are not usually made up of actual stock shares – but rather a series of options, swaps, forwards and a host of other derived securities, in amounts and proportions that only the specialists and the managers of the ETF know about."
This makes no sense at all. It is like saying I don't own stocks-- I own mutual funds. I'd have you call some "specialist traders" firm's...but they don't work anymore. They got their names changed to LEAD MARKET MAKERS. That happened when the NYSE bought the AMEX. You remember that, it was in all the papers. Lastly: Try this website....it will learn ya as to the workings of the SKF. You know the DOW JONES Financial Index.
www.djindexes.com/mdsi...
In all honesty, if you take a fee for your services I hope you give a lot to charity.
thank you for your nice article,
but you throw some headlines about poor performing ETFs on the reader and don't explain where this poor performance might come from.
For instance the US Oil ETF (USO) performed poorly in the last months? Could this be because the US-Oil was in a Super-Contango-Situation? If so, the ETF might not to be to blame at all.
Same with the other examples, you gave.
Why haven't you even tried to find some explanations yourself?
Greetings from Hamburg
Stefan
The daily holdings of all ETFs are published. They have to be.
USO is a very bad investment, but that's the future's market's fault not ETFs as a whole.
"Creation Units" are not black boxes of unknown securities, they're just bigger versions of the individual shares - sold in blocks to reduce transaction costs.
What is this dude talking about?
Prudence would suggest removing this article from the site as it will only serve to confuse investors who assume they are receiving well-informed opinions.
On Jun 05 06:42 AM Chezfrederick wrote:
> Excellent article, well written and 100% true... I especially liked
> the title... ETFs are good for TRADING period.