About a week ago, iShares released its annual Management Reports of Fund Performance, which disclose how well each ETF performed in 2009. I highly recommend that every ETF investor take the time to look at these once a year. You may receive them in the mail from your brokerage, but if not, you can download them anytime from SEDAR. Start by following this link, type the fund company’s name in the search box, then choose “Management Report of Fund Performance” from the pull-down menu.
One of the most useful pieces of information in these reports is the fund’s tracking error. This is the difference between fund’s return and the return of its index benchmark. Each iShares report includes a line like this:
For the year ended December 31, the Fund returned 9.5% versus the Index return of 10%. The main reasons for the difference in performance of -0.5% between the Fund and the Index were management fees (-0.30%) and other miscellaneous factors (-0.20%).
You should fully expect an index fund to trail its benchmark index by the amount of its MER. That’s simply the cost of investing. But an index fund shouldn’t trail its index by much more than that: too many “miscellaneous factors” mean the fund is not well managed.
As you can see from this chart, iShares ETFs generally do a good job tracking their indexes, especially in fixed-income:
| Index | Fund | Tracking | |||
| return | return | MER | error | ||
| S&P/TSX 60 | XIU | 31.94% | 31.50% | 0.17% | -0.44% |
| S&P/ TSX Capped Composite | XIC | 35.05% | 34.46% | 0.25% | -0.59% |
| Dow Jones Select Dividend | XDV | 37.83% | 36.90% | 0.50% | -0.93% |
| Dow Jones Select Growth | XCG | 22.84% | 22.17% | 0.50% | -0.67% |
| Dow Jones Select Value | XCV | 44.87% | 43.81% | 0.50% | -1.06% |
| REIT Sector | XRE | 55.25% | 53.50% | 0.55% | -1.75% |
| S&P 500 (hedged) | XSP | 24.08% | 22.95% | 0.24% | -1.13% |
| MSCI EAFE (hedged) | XIN | 23.45% | 18.11% | 0.49% | -5.34% |
| DEX Universe Bond | XBB | 5.41% | 4.98% | 0.30% | -0.43% |
| Short-Term Bond | XSB | 4.54% | 4.34% | 0.25% | -0.20% |
| Long-Term Bond | XLB | 5.49% | 5.31% | 0.35% | -0.18% |
| Government Bond | XGB | 1.57% | 1.22% | 0.35% | -0.35% |
| Corporate Bond | XCB | 16.26% | 15.10% | 0.40% | -1.16% |
| Real-Return Bond | XRB | 14.50% | 14.13% | 0.35% | -0.37% |
One thing jumps out from these numbers: the iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund (XIN), which holds stocks in developed countries overseas (Europe, Japan, Australia) has an enormous tracking error of -5.34%. When I looked at similar international funds from Claymore, TD and Vanguard, I found tracking errors in the same range, which is very unusual. This leads me to think there was some anomaly in the international markets during 2009 that made the indexes difficult to track. I’m looking into the issue and will report back when I know more.
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Interesting post. Something to look into when comparing index funds and etfs.
The tracking on the EAFE is a result of Fair Value Pricing. The last couple of days of the year were volatile and that causes tracking in the short-run to increase. Vanguard has a video on its website explaining fair value pricing.
Brian,
The FVP will even out over longer periods to time. If you look at 3 year returns, the impace of FVP becomes almost 0. Then it is back to tracking and pricing.
Marcus: Many thanks for your help in explaining this. I will look into the issue further and prepare a post on this topic.
Whenever the international markets close and the North American markets move in the other direction (up or down), there is a chance of a temporary widening of tracking error. Again, it is imperative to look at a 3 year track record and, for ETFs, the market price returns not NAV.
Hopefully you will advise on this post when your further research is reported on.
I appreciate your investigations – 5% error is alarming!
I have calls in to both iShares and Claymore. As Marcus explains above, the large error is something of an illusion that disappears over time, so there’s no need to dump XIN, but I too am interested in understanding how it comes about. Stay tuned.
I stand corrected on 1 issue. After making several calls to people I know, there is an additional issue regarding the tracking of the CAD hedged EAFE product. From what I am told the hedge is essentially applied once a month and this widens tracking considerably and may not even out over the long run. I am not an expert on the mechanics of a hedge so I don’t want to pretend that I understand every nook and cranny regarding that issue.
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