If you’re looking for the top ETFs this year, the Vanguard Australian Shares High Yield ETF (ASX: VHY) and the Betashares Geared Australian Equity Fund (Hedge Fund) ETF (ASX: GEAR) could be worthy of your watchlist.
Why investors study the Australian Shares High Yield ETF and Geared Australian Equity Fund (Hedge Fund) ETF
The Vanguard VHY ETF provides exposure to the largest dividend-paying Australian shares, based on market capitalisation and forecast dividend yield. It tracks the FTSE Australian High Dividend Yield Index. The index excludes real estate investment trusts (REITs) and caps the total exposure to any sector/industry at 40%.
BetaShares GEAR Fund is an internally geared fund, investing in the largest 200 companies on the ASX, by market capitalisation.
Want to know (lots) more? Read through our full GEAR ETF review: see our GEAR ETF review now.
Obviously, an easy way to analyse any ETF or fund like GEAR or VHY is with quantitative methods, such as studying the fees and past performance (keeping in mind past performance is no guarantee of future performance).
We’ll keep it easy and just study the fees. Based on our data for July 2021, the VHY ETF has a management expense ratio (MER) of 0.25% while the GEAR ETF’s yearly fee was 0.80%.So VHY comes out on top. 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.
How do they perform?
Typically, we want to a see ETFs with a three-year track record of solid performance. Put another way, when an ETF achieves a three year track record, we score it positively than might otherwise be the case. That said, there are exceptions to this rule of thumb. Also, remember that it’s hard to compare an ETF with a hedge fund strategy against other ETFs. Why? Hedge fund ETFs often use inverse or ‘opposite’ strategies which means that they’re designed to move in an opposite direction to the market. Nevertheless, we can see that both ETFs met their three-year performance milestone.
Finally, at Best ETFs Australia, we apply a rating to the ETF issuer or provider. That is, the company that starts and is responsible for operating the ETF on the ASX. There are too many considerations that go into our scoring to detail here. The issuer of VHY is Vanguard. Vanguard ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We consider Vanguard to be in Australia’s top three ETF providers for retail investors, advisers and institutions. GEAR’s provider is Betashares. Betashares ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We believe BetaShares is one of the leading providers of index and non-index style products to retail investors in Australia.
Conclusion
Did you know we have free reports? View our ASX VHY review and ASX GEAR review today.
For us, the VHY ETF ranks positively 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…
