On the ASX, the Vaneck MSCI Australian Sustainable Equity ETF (ASX: GRNV) and SPDR S&P/ASX 50 ETF (ASX: SFY) might be worth digging into in 2021.
What are the Vaneck GRNV and SPDR SFY ETFs designed to do?
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 SPDR SFY ETF is the only Australian ETF providing exposure to Australia’s top 50 listed companies, by market capitalisation. SFY provides a low-cost way to invest in the ASX’s top 50 companies through a single fund.
For more information on the GRNV ETF, see our ASX GRNV review.
We’ll keep it basic and just study the fees. Based on our data for December 2020, the GRNV ETF has a management expense ratio (MER) of 0.35% while the SFY ETF’s yearly fee was 0.29%. Therefore, SFY wins on this one. That said, a more useful metric to know is the fee quartiles that these ETFs find themselves in (note: quartile 1 is best). For example, any ETF which has a fee below 0.3% would be considered in our first (best) quartile.
Three-year return?
As Jerry Maguire said, ‘show me the money’. 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 positive return one year just to generate inferior 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. Both ETFs have achieved our three-year performance hurdle. As of December 2020, the GRNV ETF had an average annual return of 8.42%. During the same time, the SFY ETF returned 7.56%.
Okay, one final thing. Let’s talk about the company responsible for the ETF. There are too many factors that go into our internal scoring of fund providers to step through in this article. The provider behind the GRNV ETF is Vaneck. VanEck ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. Our team considers VanEck to be one of Australia’s leading providers of specialised ETFs and funds for retail investors and advisers. . Meannwhile, SFY’s provider is SPDR. SPDR ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We think SPDR is one of Australia’s top 10 ETF providers for advisers and institutions, and its ETFs on the ASX provide good exposure to particular financial markets for retail investors.
Our takeaway
Don’t forget our free reviews on ASX GRNV and ASX SFY.
For us, the GRNV ETF ranks fairly better for our internal scoring methodology but not by much.
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…
