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ETF Price Wars: A Good Thing or Just More Hype?

October 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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Fidelity has fired another salvo in the ongoing ETF price wars with the introduction of a number low cost sector ETFs.   Schwab, TD, Blackrock, Vanguard, and others have also participated in this price war in one form or another over the past couple of years.  Low ETF expenses and low or no transaction fees are a good thing, but should they be the deciding factor in your decision where to invest?

ETF Price Wars: A Good Thing or Just More Hype?

Understand what you are buying 

As we’ve learned from the PBS Frontline special The Retirement Gamble among other sources, low investment costs are a key determinant accumulating a sufficient retirement nest egg.  The first and most important factor in choosing an ETF to include in your portfolio is to understand what the ETF invests in.

An ETF that tracks an index such as the S&P 500 is pretty simple.  However ETF providers are introducing new products seemingly every day.  According to Chuck Jaffe in a MarketWatch article, a Vanguard report found that “1,400 U.S. listed ETFs track more than 1,000 different indexes. But more than half of these benchmarks had existed for less than six months before an ETF came along to track it.”

Beyond commissions and expense ratios 

Fidelity recently published an excellent piece on its site, Beyond Commissions: An ETF’s Price Matters.  According to the article:

“Commissions aren’t the only cost to consider when buying an ETF. Most investors compare expense ratios, but a less appreciated—yet important factor—is the bid-ask spread, which is the difference between the highest price a buyer is willing to pay for an asset (bid) and the lowest price at which a seller is willing to sell (ask). While investors should consider the Net Asset Value (NAV) of an ETF, the price you pay is a seller’s ask price, which can be at a discount or premium to the NAV.

“It’s important to remember that not all ETFs are created equal,” says Ram Subramanium, president of Fidelity brokerage services. “So, investors may want to look for ETFs with established track records and low bid-ask spreads relative to their peers.”

As an interesting aside here, one of the low cost sector ETFs that Fidelity recently introduced was its materials ETF Fidelity MSCI Materials ETF (FMAT).  This ETF competes directly with the Vanguard Materials ETF (VAW) and has an expense ratio of 0.12% vs. 0.14% for the Vanguard ETF.  However the recent bid/ask spread for the Fidelity ETF was 11.68% vs. 1.57% for the Vanguard ETF (according to Morningstar).  The passage above from the Fidelity article might indicate that the older, more established Vanguard ETF is a better choice here.

Other factors to consider

  • Unless you are a frequent trader or you are purchasing ETFs in small dollar amounts trading commissions really shouldn’t be a major factor in your ETF investing decisions.
  • Consider the full breadth of the investment products available to you as well as your investing objectives when choosing an investment custodian.  ETF price wars are much like loss leaders in retailing.  Major custodians such as Fidelity are using low cost ETFs to get you in the door and to hopefully entice you to use their services to invest in mutual funds, stocks, and other investment products via Fidelity.
  • Are the commission-free ETFs the right ones for your portfolio?  For example a number of the ETFs offered on Schwab’s commission-free platform are not ones that I would generally choose for my client’s portfolios.
  • How cheap is cheap?  I doubt that selling one ETF and buying another to save say 0.02% on the expense ratio makes sense, especially if there are transaction costs or capital gains to consider when selling.
  • How well does the ETF track it’s benchmark index?  I’m often surprised by the variations when comparing two ETFs that I would assume to be identical other than the name of the ETF provider.
Are ETF price wars a good thing for investors?

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Are ETF price wars a good thing for investors?  Yes.  Are ETF price wars being used by major custodians and ETF providers to create hype in the financial press in order to lure investors?  Again yes.  The bottom line here is that your financial plan and investment strategy should guide your choice of ETFs, mutual funds, or any investment vehicle, not a slightly lower cost or the lure of free trades.

Please contact me with your investing and financial planning questions. Check out an online service like Personal Capital to manage all of your accounts all in one place or purchase the latest version of Quicken. Check out our Resources page for more tools and services.

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5 Things You Should Know About ETFs

July 17, 2013 by 2 Comments
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English: Wall Street sign on Wall Street

ETFs continue to gain ground as an investment of choice among many individual and institutional investors.  ETFs are similar to mutual funds in that they are pooled investment vehicles and to closed-end funds in that they are traded on a stock exchange like individual stocks.  ETFs, though popular, are often misunderstood by investors.  Here are 5 things you should know about ETFs.

Not all ETFs use conventional underlying benchmarks

The first ETFs were largely index products such as the SPDR S&P 500 (ticker SPY) which tracks the S&P 500 index.  SPY remains one of the most traded ETFs day and day out in terms of volume.

An ETF like SPY is pretty easy to understand.  The underlying holdings mirror the S&P 500 index and performance generally tracks the index less the ETF’s expenses (0.09% according to Morningstar).

With the popularity of ETFs, the growth and proliferation of new vehicles is quite high.  Many of these new ETFs track some “funky” benchmarks.   Market Watch’s Chuck Jaffe cited a Vanguard report that found “1,400 U.S. listed ETFs track more than 1,000 different indexes. But more than half of these benchmarks had existed for less than six months before an ETF came along to track it.”   

I suspect this issue will become more prevalent as ETF providers continue to introduce new ETFs in a bid to capture market share and assets.

Some ETFs are based on fads or gimmicks 

The Winklevoss twins (of Facebook fame) recently announced the proposed launch of a new ETF tracking Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is virtual currency that exists outside of governmental regulation.  The ETF faces many hurdles and may never get off of the ground.

Should the ETF ever become available for trading this would be the ultimate in gimmicky ETFs.  I find Bitcoin itself a bit hard to understand.  An ETF tracking this at best undeveloped market would in my mind be a stretch.  As an investor this is the type of ETF that I would seriously question.

There are any number of ETFs and other Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) that just don’t work out.

ETF Liquidity is complicated.

With stocks liquidity and the trading volume of the equity are closely correlated.  While a thinly traded ETF might result in a little less liquidity the real determinant of liquidity with an ETF is the liquidity of the underlying investments that make up the ETF.

For example the SPDR S&P 500 is made up of the 500 largest domestic stocks.  These stocks are highly liquid and generally all have substantial daily trading volume.

By contrast we’ve seen some fairly wide spreads between the underlying net asset value and the market prices of some emerging market ETFs of late.  This is in large part a function of a lack of liquidity of the underlying holdings of these ETFs.

Not all ETF structures are identical

Vanguard’s ETFs are structured as another share class of their mutual funds in most cases.  Many popular ETFs are structured as open-end funds, others are structured as Unit Investment Trusts (UIT).  Many single commodity ETFs are structured as Grantor Trusts.  Exchange Traded Notes (ETN) are actually debt instruments linked to the performance of a currency, a commodity, or an index.

Each of these structures have different characteristics and these characteristics may have an impact on the tax treatment of gains or distributions.  For example some commodity based ETFs have a different ongoing tax treatment than say an equity-based index ETF.

It is important that you understand any such factors of your ETF or ETN to avoid nasty surprises at tax time or undo risks that may be associated with the product’s structure. 

Free commission ETFs may not be the best deal for you 

Schwab, Fidelity and others are offering a number of ETFs that trade commission free.  That’s a good thing, but before jumping on one these offers make sure the ETFs offered for free are the best deal for you.

The benefit of free commissions can quickly be negated by high ongoing expenses.  Trading costs are relatively low at most online and discount brokers so unless you are a frequent trader this really shouldn’t be a factor in the decision as to which ETFs belong in your portfolio.

Additionally buying an ETF that doesn’t fit your investment objectives just to save a few dollars in trading costs is absurd.

ETFs can offer a low cost vehicle to build a portfolio.  I use index ETFs extensively for their low costs and adherence to an investment style as a key building block in my client asset allocation strategies.

Like anything else, however, it is vital that you understand what you are buying and that you invest in ETFs that are appropriate for your investment plan.

I want to thank ETF expert Christian Magoon for his contributions to this post. 

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out the Hire Me tab to learn more about my freelance financial writing and financial consulting services. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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Resources to consider

Check out Personal Capital’s retirement planning tools to be sure you are on track. Personal Capital can help you organize your entire financial picture and provide advice if needed.

Looking to learn more about investing and financial planning? Whether you do it yourself or work with a financial advisor, the Fire Your Financial Advisor online course from the White Coat Investor can help. Make this the year you invest in yourself. Be sure you have the knowledge and the tools to thrive in today’s complex financial environment.

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Pens, Trinkets, and Mutual Funds

June 5, 2013 by 4 Comments
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McCormick Place

With the annual Morningstar Investment Conference coming up here in Chicago next week, my thoughts naturally gravitate to replenishing my office supply of high quality pens in the exhibit hall at McCormick Place.  Truth be known, my thoughts are more focused on preparing for my participation on a panel on Friday morning called Practical Solutions for a Challenging Retirement Landscape.  Morningstar’s superstar financial author and columnist Christine Benz was kind enough to invite me to participate in this discussion along with representatives from T. Rowe Price and Vanguard.

Pens and Trinkets

Ever since the first financial conference I attended in the mid 1990s I’ve never ceased to be amazed by the number of items that mutual fund providers and other financial services vendors can find to stick their names and logos on.  When my kids were younger they were the only ones in their school with backpacks from places like the Philadelphia Commodity Exchange and the London Stock Exchange.

At one point I had a whole section of T-shirts from defunct mutual fund companies like Strong and Berger.  Add an infinite number of logoed tote bags and baseball hats and you get the picture.  Our kids always liked the stress balls I found at many of the booths (we were obviously tough parents).

In recent years I’ve tried to be more practical at Morningstar and other conferences and focus on gathering a supply of pens for the office.  I always grab as many as I can because my wife and kids always seem to be on the prowl for these as well.

While strolling around the exhibit hall at last year’s conference I was really making a great haul on pens when it suddenly hit me:  There are a lot of companies that offer mutual funds and I’ve never heard of many of them.  And I’m a financial advisor.

How many mutual funds are there? 

According to the Investment Company Institute there were 7,596 mutual funds at the end of 2012.  This is down from the high of 8,305 at the end of 2001.  Add in 602 closed-end funds and 1,194 ETFs and there are lots of choices for investors.

How do you choose the right funds? 

Any selection of mutual funds, ETFs, or any other investment vehicle should start with an investment plan, which is ideally an outgrowth of your financial plan.  Once you have an asset allocation strategy you will want to fill these allocation buckets with funds and ETFs that are appropriate for your situation.

Here are six mutual fund selection mistakes to avoid:

  • Assuming that a “brand name” fund from a well-known fund family is automatically a good investment choice.
  • Relying on lists of top mutual funds from popular magazines or websites.
  • Ignoring a fund’s history.
  • Avoid mutual funds from fund issuers that you’ve never heard of.
  • Assume that all index funds are created equally.
  • Assume that mutual fund companies automatically have your best interests at heart.

Some additional considerations in selecting mutual funds and ETFs:

  • Expenses matter.
  • When using an index product make sure that you understand what index the fund is tracking and that it tracks that index closely.
  • Avoid actively managed funds that are nothing more than closet indexers.
  • When building a portfolio understand the concepts of diversification and correlation.
  • Understand why you are choosing a given fund or ETF, where it fits in your portfolio, and what would cause you to eliminate this holding.

The Morningstar Investment Conference is a great place to catch some excellent educational sessions and to talk to fund and ETF issuers to learn about their products.  I would be remiss in not mentioning the great work done by Leslie Marshall and her team from Morningstar in staging this conference.  The fact that it always runs smoothly is a tribute to Leslie’s organizational and management skills.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

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Investing: Even Indexing Takes Work

May 16, 2013 by 8 Comments
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INDEX IIM Lucknow Logo

The benefits of low-cost index mutual funds and ETFs are all over the news.  They were front and center in the recent PBS Frontline Special The Retirement Gamble.  Index funds are a great tool for investors of all ages; in many cases these passively managed funds beat the majority of their actively managed peers within the same investment style.  However, investing in index funds takes work, especially with the proliferation of new index products that continue to hit the marketplace.

Expenses matter 

Costs matter when investing.  One of the biggest lures of index fund investing is that many of these products provide a low cost way to investment in a given segment of the market.  If you are looking for an index fund that mimics the S&P 500 there are many great low cost alternatives such as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (Ticker VFINX) with an expense ratio of 0.17% or the SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (Ticker SPY) with an expense ratio of 0.09%.  On the other hand, there is also the Rydex S&P 500 A (Ticker RYSOX) with its expense ratio of 1.51%.  How big of a deal is this difference?

A $10,000 investment in the Vanguard 500 fund made on May 31, 2006 and held until May 15, 2013 would now be worth $15,064.  That same investment in the Rydex S&P 500 fund would be worth $13,798 or 9.2% less for an investment in a mutual fund tracking the same index as the Vanguard fund. 

Understand the underlying index 

In the wake of the 2008-2009 market downturn new index products, especially in the ETF space, have proliferated.  ETF providers are falling all over themselves to bring new index products to the market hoping to attract assets.  Like any investment, investing in an index fund or ETF requires that you understand what it is that you are buying.

When I think of indexing I think of the traditional, basic index products that track benchmarks such as the S&P 500, the total U.S. stock market, the total non-U.S. market, the domestic bond market, etc.  Additionally I typically use index funds to benchmark the U.S. small and mid cap equity spaces, real estate, and emerging markets equity among others.

Several months ago Market Watch’s Chuck Jaffe cited a Vanguard report that found “1,400 U.S. listed ETFs track more than 1,000 different indexes. But more than half of these benchmarks had existed for less than six months before an ETF came along to track it.”  

As an investor this should be a huge red flag.  What this study says is that many of these new index products were developed much like the monster in the Mel Brook’s classic Young Frankenstein.  Look back-testing is not inherently bad and many of these new index products are appropriate for professional traders.  However if you are looking to index in the fashion that Vanguard founder John Bogle and others espouse then you should consider sticking with index products that track known, battle-tested market benchmarks.

Asset allocation is still vital 

Whether you use index products as a portion of your overall portfolio in conjunction with other investment vehicles such as actively managed mutual funds or individual stocks, or if you invest in index funds exclusively you still need to develop and asset allocation for your portfolio.  As I say frequently on this blog, this should be done as an outgrowth of your financial plan.

Even a seemingly simple strategy of investing in a total U.S. stock market fund, a total international stock market fund, and a total bond market fund still requires that you determine how much to invest in each fund, that you monitor your allocation and rebalance when needed, and that you review and adjust your target allocation as you age or if your situation changes.

Index funds and ETFs are a great investment tool.  Like any tool it is important that you select the right index product and that you manage your portfolio properly.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out the Hire Me tab to learn more about my freelance financial writing and financial consulting services.  

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Winning The Retirement Gamble: Step 1 Adjust Your Mindset

May 6, 2013 by 9 Comments
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The PBS Frontline documentary The Retirement Gamble has sparked a lot of discussion, both pro and con.  One thing that is clear, the show contributed to the discussion about the lack of retirement readiness among many in the United States.  I’m hardly an expert in behavioral finance, but I do know that in order for investors to be able to focus on planning for their retirement they need to adopt  the right mindset.

Tri-Athletes Mental Tool Box -- F.A.S.T.

Lose the victim mentality

I saw a lot of this on the PBS special and see this written about frequently in the press.  The last few years especially have been rough on many of us saving for retirement.  Job losses; the financial crises; the Flash Crash; the realization that not all financial advisors have their client’s best interests at heart; the mutual fund scandals of the middle part of the last decade might all be good excuses to feel like a victim.

As my wife used to say to our kids on the soccer field (when they had a minor injury) “…suck it up and get back in the game…”  If you feel like a victim you likely will end up as one.  Right or wrong saving for retirement is on you, deal with it.

Drink your own flavor of Kool Aid 

I love index funds and ETFs and use them extensively throughout my practice.  They comprise the majority of the assets for which I provide advice.  I don’t, however, use passive index products exclusively.  There are solid actively managed funds that in my opinion warrant inclusion in some client portfolios.

There are some folks out there who have an almost cult-like devotion to indexing and John Bogle.  Mr. Bogle deserves all of the respect and admiration that he gets and then some.  My point is that no single way of doing things is always right in all cases.  It’s OK to mix and match funds, ETFs, active, and passive strategies, as well as other vehicles as long as they fit your financial plan and your needs.  Don’t let anyone put you down because you disagree with their way of doing things.

Focus on the future, don’t dwell on the past 

The past is in the books.  Maybe you didn’t save enough perhaps you invested in all of the wrong places.  Perhaps you had a greedy “financial guy” whose focus was on selling you products that enriched their bottom line at your expense.  Don’t forget your past mistakes, learn from them, but don’t dwell on them.

All you can do in the financial planning and investing world is move forward from wherever you are now.

  • Find a fee-only financial advisor who puts your interests first.
  • Get a financial plan in place with appropriate goals and strategies.
  • Review your investing strategy.
  • Beef up your retirement savings.
  • Manage your career.
  • Take charge

Our retirement savings system puts the responsibility for accumulating enough for retirement on us.  Get in the game make sure you have the right mindset and attitude to be successful.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are right for your situation? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed guidance and advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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Do Index Funds Reduce Investment Risk?

February 27, 2013 by 10 Comments
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Index mutual funds and ETFs (we will refer to them as index funds unless otherwise indicated going forward in this article) have received a lot of favorable press of late.  This is justifiable as index funds offer a low cost way to invest and are generally quite specific to a given investment style.  Over the years I have been asked if index funds reduce investment risk.  Let’s examine this question.

Illustration of Standard deviation

What is investment risk? 

One definition of  investment risk as the variability of the investment’s returns also known as standard deviation.   Note variability means returns that are both higher and lower than the fund’s average returns over a given period, say the trailing three or five years.

I contend that most investors would define investment risk as the risk of losing money on an investment.  This is especially true in the wake of the recent financial crises.

An index fund takes on the risk of the underlying index it tries to replicate. For instance, in 2008 the S&P 500 Index lost 37 percent. There are many funds and ETFs that track that index. They all lost around 37 percent plus the fund’s expenses. For example, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (symbol VFINX) posted a loss of 37.02 percent for the year.

Active management vs. index funds 

Let’s take a look at several of Morningstar’s analyst favorites in the Large Growth style compared with an index fund in this style and with the S&P 500 index.

10 yr. Standard Deviation

10 yr. mean return
Vanguard Growth Index (VIGRX)

+/-15.14%

8.10%
Jensen Quality Growth (JENSX)

+/-13.19%

6.62%
Vanguard Primecap (VPMCX)

+/-15.50%

10.83%
Harbor Capital Apprec. (HACAX)

+/-15.57%

8.65%
S&P 500 Index

+/-14.80%

7.93%

Data from Morningstar.com

In plain English, the Vanguard Primecap fund posted an average annual return of 10.83% over the trailing ten years depicted.  Based on fund’s standard deviation of +/- 15.50% one would expect the fund’s returns to range between -4.67% and +26.33% about 68% of the time.

The bigger take away from this chart is that the Vanguard Index fund’s volatility was lower than a couple of the funds and higher than Jensen.   As with any index fund the Vanguard fund experienced approximately the level of risk and return of its underlying index, other actively managed funds in this category experienced more or less risk and return based upon the stock selections of the managers.

Manager Risk 

Index funds can eliminate manager risk, or the risk of investing in an actively managed fund only to see the manager underperform the benchmark index.  As an example for the trailing periods ending January 31, 2013 the Vanguard Growth Index outperformed 83% of the other Large Growth funds for the trailing three years; 84% of the other fund for the trailing five years; and 61% of the other fund for the trailing ten years.

This is not to say this will be the case with all index funds over all periods of time. However, a well-run index fund should track its underlying index closely and deliver index-like performance.

Several years ago an instructor at a continuing education session indicated that many of the actively managed mutual funds atop the 10-year rankings in their respective categories most likely spent three of those calendar years in the bottom quartile of their category rankings. For an investor who held one of these funds over that entire 10-year period this isn’t a problem. But investors who bought into such a fund at a different time or over various periods of time may have had quite a different experience.  As we know, money tends to chase performance, hot funds attract investor dollars, funds that are struggling tend to see more client redemptions.  This is so prevalent that Morningstar measures investor performance along with the actual performance of the mutual fund.  Investor performance provides a measure of how actual investors fared by investing in this fund, including the timing of investments and redemptions.  In many cases investor performance varies significantly from the actual fund returns.

A few other points to consider: 

Expenses matter

You should generally buy the cheapest index fund that tracks the index you are interested in. There is a huge disparity in the fees for funds that track the S&P 500 for example.

Understand the underlying index.

There has been a proliferation of new index ETFs tracking a variety of indexes. In many cases I have never heard of many of these indexes. Make sure the index tracked by the fund or ETF you are considering makes sense for your overall portfolio and that the index has a real history not just some back-tested data behind it.

Using index funds is no guarantee of investment success

Just like with any mutual fund or ETF, how you use these products is the key to your success. Index funds are nothing more than a building block to construct your portfolio.

Don’t dismiss active managers  

Evaluate actively managed funds and understand why they have been successful in the past and in what types of environments they might lag their peers. Moreover, carefully think through the role the fund might play in your portfolio, and be aware of who is managing the fund. Is the same person or team that actually compiled the impressive track record still in charge? Or has this manager moved on, placing the fund in the hands of some new, unproven manager?

Index funds do not necessarily reduce investment risk or guarantee a higher return

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Index funds do not necessarily reduce investment risk or guarantee a higher investment return than using actively managed funds.  Like anything in the investment world, investing with a strategy (ideally tied to your financial plan), monitoring your results, rebalancing your allocation, and making adjustments to your portfolio when warranted are still key elements in successful investing.  Index funds are simply a tool you can use in this process.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are properly positioned to meet your financial goals? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for more detailed advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if its right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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E*Trade’s Fee Commercials – Informative or Misleading?

February 18, 2013 by 6 Comments
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English: Logo for E-Trade

During the Super Bowl I watched E*Trade Financial’s commercials deriding the 2% (of assets under management) fees they claim are charged by many financial advisors and portraying their advice services as the white knight answer to this problem.

Are these commercials informative?  

I say yes in that they focus on the issue of fees for financial advice.  Fees for investment vehicles such as mutual funds as well as for financial advice have come under scrutiny of late which I think is a good thing.  Any advisor who is charging 2% is charging too much.  That said I am not aware of any advisors who actually charge this much, but I’ll give E*Trade the benefit of the doubt on this.

Are these commercials misleading?  

Again the answer, in my opinion, is yes.  There are many questions that I have such as:

  • How many advisors actually charge 2%?
  • What types of services are we talking about?  Investment advice only?  Wealth management?
  • What is included in the 2%?  I’m assuming this is only the actual fee charged by the advisor and not the expense ratios of mutual funds or other investment vehicles. 

In any event I feel that E*Trade was conveniently vague here.

What does E*Trade’s Financial Advice Cost?

Here’s what I found looking around their site:

Managed Investment Portfolios $25,000 minimum

Managed Investment Portfolios are actively managed discretionary portfolios of leading mutual funds or ETFs, rigorously researched, selected, and optimized by a team of experienced investment professionals. We’ll help you choose the portfolio that’s right for you. 

To me this sounded a lot like what the brokerage firms call a wrap account, which in fact I found that this was when I read the fine print on the site.  Some portfolio manager (who E*Trade describes as “E*TRADE Capital Management, LLC, a registered investment advisor, manages the Managed Investment Portfolios program. Our investment committee and a team of analysts develop investment portfolio models and evaluate individual investments in accordance with various macroeconomic factors, fund and security data, and proprietary and third-party institutional research.”) manages your assets based upon several model portfolios.  So far this sounds like you are getting a “prefab” portfolio managed by some unknown person(s).

For these services you will be charged a percentage of the assets that you have invested in the program:

Investment assets Percentage of assets fee
$100,000 or less 0.90%
$100,001 – $250,000 0.80%
$250,001 – $500,000 0.75%
$500,001 – $1 million 0.70%
Over $1 million 0.65%

These fees seem reasonable, but not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.  Remember there is no financial planning advice, just strictly portfolio management.

Note these fees do not include the expense ratios of the underlying investments.  The program description mentions that either an all mutual fund or all ETF portfolio will be used, it doesn’t sound like there is any mixing and matching of the two.  If I were a betting man I’d bet that all of the underlying investments are on some sort of E*Trade platform for which they pay for inclusion.

Unified Managed Accounts -$250,000 minimum

Complex financial needs require flexible investment solutions. Unified Managed Accounts offers broad diversification across several asset classes, tax management features, and access to experienced money managers—all in one professionally managed account. 

This option is actually managed by E*Trade advisors and an outside investment firm called Lockwood Advisors.  Investors in this service do receive more custom services such as tax-efficient investments and a portfolio that can include a combination of investment vehicles such as mutual funds, ETFs, and individual stocks.

The fees are of course a bit higher for these services, and frankly seem a bit on the high side to me:

Investment assets Percentage of assets fee
First $1 million ($250,000 minimum) 1.25%
Over $1 million up to $2 million 1.15%
Over $2 million to $5 million 1.10%
Over $5 million 0.95%

Again, note these fees do not include the expense ratios of the underlying investments nor does this include any sort of financial planning or wealth management services.

Questions to ask if considering E*Trade’s advice services  

  • Who exactly will be managing my money?
  • Who is my point of contact?
  • How much experience do these people have?
  • How much turnover has there been among the investment management and the Financial Consultant group?
  • Does E*Trade Financial receive compensation from the mutual fund and ETF providers they recommend?
  • What types of real (not back-tested) results has E*Trade achieved? 

Note these are the types of questions that you should ask of any money manager.  And make no mistake you are hiring a money manager and not a financial advisor when you go with one of these services from E*Trade.  Note that mutual fund, ETF, and separate account managers are also considered money managers.

This is differs from a financial advisor who is also a financial planner and/or a wealth manager in addition to being an investment advisor.

Am I knocking E*Trade’s advice solutions, absolutely not.  What I am knocking is the lack of transparency and clarity in their commercials.  I would say to anyone considering these services that the ambiguity of these commercials is disturbing and this should be taken into consideration when evaluating their offerings.

Please feel free to contact me with your financial planning and investing questions.  

Please check out our Resources page for links to some additional tools and services that might be beneficial to you.

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ETFs – 4 Considerations Before Buying

January 30, 2013 by 4 Comments
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English: You may have heard enough of bad news...

ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are the  “hot” investing product. Fund companies are tripping over themselves to bring new ETFs to the market place.  This reminds me a lot of the mid to late 90s and the proliferation of new mutual funds.  While the number of ETFs is lower, the growth in new products is still high.

Traditionally most ETFs have been index products.  The new frontier is actively managed ETFs.  Several providers have filed for approval to offer active ETFs, no doubt buoyed by the success of the ETF version of PIMco’s popular Total Return bond fund (tickers BOND for the ETF and PTTRX for the fund).

I have been a big user of ETFs in the portfolios of my individual clients.  To date I’ve used index ETFs exclusively.  The low cost and style purity are the big selling points in my opinion.

Just as with mutual funds or any other investment vehicle, investors need to do their homework before buying an ETF.  Here are 4 factors to consider:

Understand the ETF’s underlying index

Beware of ETFs with somewhat suspect underlying indexes. According to Chuck Jaffe in a MarketWatch article several months ago, a Vanguard report found that “1,400 U.S. listed ETFs track more than 1,000 different indexes. But more than half of these benchmarks had existed for less than six months before an ETF came along to track it.” 

Many of these new ETFs rely on the hypothetical back-testing of these new indexes. While history is not always a good predictor of future performance, I like to see an ETF with an underlying index that has been “battle tested” in the real world.

Even among ETFs tracking more traditional indexes there can be differences.  For example in the Large Cap Growth style:

  • iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF) tracks the Russell 1000 Growth Index, the growth slice of the Russell 1000 Index.
  • Vanguard’s Growth ETF (VUG) is in the process of switching index benchmarks as part of an overall switch of benchmark providers by Vanguard across many of its index mutual funds and ETFs.  The new provider’s index will remain a bit different from the Russell index used by the Barclay’s ishares product.
  • The Schwab U.S. Large Growth Index (SCHG) tracks Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Growth Total Stock Market Index, with a smaller market cap than the benchmark index of the other two ETFs. Additionally the Schwab ETF has higher weighting in financial stocks than most other Large Growth indexes.

To most investors these are fairly subtle differences, but none the less each of these Large Growth ETFs will exhibit slightly different performance during different market conditions.

Leverage and inverse indexing

Not all ETFs make sense for all investors.  There are a number of ETFs that move inversely with a given benchmark.  For example there are ETFs that move in the opposite direction of the S&P 500 index.  What many investors fail to understand is that these movements are tied to the markets on a daily basis, over longer periods of time the performance may not be as closely tied to the inverse performance of the index due to the use of derivatives in these products.

Leveraged index ETFs are available both long and inverse.  These ETFs multiply the movement of the index both up and down.  This is great if you’ve “bet” in the right direction.  However if for example you hold a leveraged ETF that goes 3 times inverse of the S&P 500 Index during a  market rally the ETF will drop in value roughly 3 times as much as the gains on the S&P 500.

There is nothing wrong with either inverse or leveraged ETFs as long as you understand how they work, when and when not to use them, and are comfortable with the risks.  In my opinion these products are not appropriate for most individual investors.

Know what you are buying 

With the advent of “funky” index products as mentioned above and with the growth of actively managed ETFs, investors really need to understand where they are investing their money more than ever.

ETF providers are just like mutual fund providers (in fact many firms offer both) in that they are about gathering assets and making a profit.  There is nothing wrong with this, but make sure that you invest based upon your needs and unique situation and that you ignore their hype, especially about “new and better” ETFs. 

Cheap is good 

One of the great features about ETFs has generally been their low expense ratios.  Just as with mutual funds and any other investment vehicle the cost of ownership is critical, cheaper is better.

Along these same lines there is an ETF price war going on.  The major players are Vanguard, Barclay’s (via their ishares), and Schwab who is trying to make inroads into the ETF business. It is key to make sure that the ETF product fits your needs and your portfolio, don’t just opt for the lowest expense product.

It is also important to note the transaction fees involved in buying ETFs.  Remember ETFs trade like stocks during the trading day as opposed to mutual funds which trade daily after the market close.  A number of custodians offer no transaction fee trades for certain ETFs.  Look at how you will be investing. Will you make larger lump-sum purchases? If so, paying a transaction fee for an ETF really won’t make much of an impact. However, if you will be making smaller purchases, say via dollar-cost averaging, it pays to look around.

Do you use ETFs?  Please leave a comment about your experiences with ETFs both good or bad.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out our resources page as well.

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Mutual Funds and Alabama Football – Does Past Performance Matter?

January 16, 2013 by 2 Comments
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Nick Saban

As most of you know, The University of Alabama is once again the king of the college football world.  They recently vanquished Notre Dame to win their second consecutive BSC Championship and their third in the past four years.  Including a BCS title while coaching LSU, Alabama coach Nick Saban has won four BCS titles in the last eight years.

Can we infer anything about the future from this performance? I would argue yes based upon a couple of recent articles that I have read about Saban’s approach to coaching and managing the football program.  According to the articles, there is a process in place for just about every aspect of the program from recruiting to practices and so on.  While Alabama still has to go out and play the games (in arguably the toughest conference around) they generally seem to find a way to win under Saban as evidenced by his worst record of 10-3 in 2010.

A repeatable process is what sets Saban apart and in my opinion is the key factor in his coaching success.  A repeatable process is also a key element in investment success.

Clearly in the investment world a disclaimer on the order of “…past performance is no guarantee of future performance…” is often used.  And with good reason.  If we apply this to the world of mutual funds any number of factors can come into play.  I and many other advisor colleagues and self-directed investors have migrated in large part to passive, low cost index funds and ETFs simply because so few active managers deliver top returns year in and year out.

Two active mutual funds managers who consistently deliver superior performance 

Sequoia SEQUX is a large cap blend fund that started as disciples of Warren Buffet’s investing style and still has a very definite process in place for finding stocks that meet the management team’s criteria.  Over the 15 years ended 12/31/12 the fund ranked in the top 5% of its category and has beaten the return of the S&P 500 by an average of 308 basis points annually.  The fund ranks in the top 2% for the trailing 3 and 5 year periods and the top 22% for the trailing 10 years.  Moreover this fund is closed to new investors more than it isn’t the fund was closed for 25 years until 2008.  At that point I added this fund to the portfolios of a number of clients.  The fund closed again at the beginning of 2012.  This is a sign of a superior fund company in that they didn’t feel they can invest all of the new money that was flowing into the fund so they closed it.

PIMco Total Return PTTRX is an Intermediate Bond Fund run by famed bond fund manager Bill Gross.  This is the largest and one of the most successful bond funds around.  Gross is very visible in large part due to his regular appearances on CNBC.  Many thought he had lost his touch in 2011 when the fund ranked in the bottom 13% of its category; however the fund turned around and finished in the top 12% for 2012.  The fund ranks in the top 25% for the trailing 3 years ended 12/31/12; the 7% for both the trailing 5 and 10 year periods and the top 3% of its category for the trailing 15 years.  In all cases the fund has outperformed its benchmark the Barclay’s Aggregate Bond Index significantly.  Gross and the PIMco team clearly have a process in place that has been successful and this was reinforced by the success of the recently introduced ETF version of the fund.  I have client money in this fund.

Two active managers who used to deliver consistently superior performance

American Funds Growth AGTHX was at one time a preeminent large growth fund.  While fund had a very strong year in 2012, returning 20.54% and outpacing the S&P 500 by 454 basis points, the fund ranked in the bottom half of its category in 3 of the 5 calendar years from 2007 -2011.  This was after a five year run during which the fund had ranked in the top 18% or better of its category in each of those five years.  I suspect the fund’s bloated size followed by significant reduction in fund assets via withdrawals contributed to this recent mediocre run.

Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust LMVTX was formerly managed by the legendary Bill Miller who had rattled off a string of 15 consecutive years of beating the fund’s benchmark the S&P 500 Index.  In recent years the fund has fallen off  to the point where the fund ranked in the 99th percentile for the 5 years ended 12/31/12 and the absolute bottom of it category for the trailing 10 years.

The point is that there are actively managed mutual funds who deliver consistently excellent performance.  Even here, the performance can be uneven as evidenced by the fact that Sequoia has ranked near the bottom of its category in several individual years over the course of its solid run.

I tend to use index funds and ETFs pretty extensively, but I still use a fair number of actively managed funds as well.  Finding funds that fit the needs of my clients takes work and ongoing monitoring, but I have found this to be worth the time spent.  Even with the best managers there are no guarantees about the future, but analyzing and understanding the details of their past performance can provide insight.

As for the Crimson Tide, they may not win a third straight national title, they might not even win their division of the SEC (LSU and Texas A&M are formidable obstacles) but I have no doubt that they will be in the mix in 2013 and as long as Saban is coaching due to his process and preparation.

Please feel free to contact me with questions about your mutual funds or to address your investment and financial planning advice needs. 

Do-it-yourselfers check out morningstar.com to analyze your investments and to get a free trial for their premium services. Check out our Resources page for links to a variety of tools and services that might be beneficial to you.

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