Now could be the right time to take a look at the Vaneck MSCI Australian Sustainable Equity ETF (ASX: GRNV) and Betashares Australia 200 ETF (ASX: A200). Using our internal quantitative analysis, these ETFs seem to offer good exposure to the Australian shares sector.
Here’s how we think about the GRNV and A200 ETFs
For a diversified portfolio of sustainable Australian companies, the VanEck GRNV ETF may be of interest. This ETF focuses on Australian companies that have high environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, based on MSCI ESG Research. GRNV has been certified by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA), as part of the Responsible Investment Certification Program.
The Betashares A200 ETF provides exposure to the largest 200 Australian companies, based on market capitalisation. Unlike many other Australian shares ETFs, A200 uses the Solactive Australia 200 Index. This is virtually the same thing as the indices provided by S&P/ASX, as it also uses a market capitalisation weighting.
Get our team’s GRNV ETF review, available free when you click this link: access the free investment report.
To make this article easier to digest, we’ll just study the fees or ‘management expense ratio’ (MER). Using data for December 2020, the GRNV ETF has an MER of 0.35% while the A200 ETF had a yearly fee of 0.07%. So, A200 wins on this metric. Keep in mind, a more useful metric to know is the fee quartiles that these ETFs find themselves in (note: quartile 1 is best). Meaning, we take all the Australian shares ETFs in our database and divide them into 4 quartiles, based on their fees. For example, any ETF which has a fee below 0.3% would be considered in our first (best) quartile.
Performance analysis
Performance is important. Keep in mind, performance isn’t everything — and past performance is not indicative of future performance. It’s just one part of a much bigger picture. The reason we say performance is not everything is because of volatility of financial markets and the economy from one year to the next. Some ETFs and funds can put in a good return one year just to generate poor returns the next time around. That’s why we prefer three-year or seven-year track records over one-year track records. It can smooth out the temporary performances caused by external factors. GRNV had notched up a three-year average annual return of 8.42% in the period through December 2020. At that time, however, the A200 ETF had not yet reached its three-year performance milestone. Past performance is not indicative of future performance for many reasons, this is just one part of our quick analysis (as you can see there’s a lot more to it!).
In summary
To keep reading about these two ETFs, be sure to visit our free GRNV ETF report or A200 ETF review.
For us, the A200 ETF rates more compelling against our internal scoring methodology, but only just.
We hope this article helped you analyse ETFs. Don’t forget, there’s a lot more to investing well than what we just outlined (risks, diversification, other potentially better ETFs, etc.). Our analyst team at Rask Australia spends months looking at new ASX investments (it’s our day job!). To make your life easier, you can get the name of our team’s top ETF pick for 2021 in a free report. Keep reading to find out how to get our analyst’s report emailed to you right now…