A look at BetaShares QRE and the VAS ETF
The BetaShares QRE ETF provides a targeted exposure to some of the largest companies in the Australian resources sector and aims to track the Solactive Australia Resources Sector Index.
The Vanguard VAS ETF provides exposure to the largest 300 Australian shares, based on market capitalisation. This is a low-cost way to access top Australian companies through a single fund.
Learn more about the VAS ETF with our full analysis page. Get our VAS review.
So where do we start analysing VAS and QRE? In addition to using our years of experience analysing ETFs to ‘get a feel’ for the ETF, there are simple checks and balances our team uses to compare similar ETFs.
The first is fees. We score ETFs based on their management fees and costs and we take into account the spread. We’ll then compare these ‘all in’ fees and costs across sectors, strategy types and ETF providers.
We’ll keep it simple and just study the fees. Based on our data for July 2022, the QRE ETF has a management expense ratio (MER) of 0.34% while the VAS ETF’s yearly fee was 0.10%. Therefore, VAS 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.
How we study past performance
Time to look at past returns. 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 attractive return one year just to generate unsatisfactory 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 July 2022, the QRE ETF had an average annual return of 10.54%. During the same time, the VAS ETF returned 6.53%.
There’s one more important thing to consider: the company that starts and runs the ETF. They are in charge of operating the ETF on the ASX. The provider of the QRE fund 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. Meanwhile, the company responsible for VAS 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.
Next steps
If you’d like to learn more about these two ETFs, be sure to visit our free QRE ETF report or VAS ETF review.
In summary, the VAS ETF ranks higher against our internal scoring methodology but not by much compared to QRE.
Please, keep in mind, there is much more to choosing a good ETF. That’s why you should now use these skills to find the best ETF you can. If you want the name of our team’s top ETF pick for 2023, keep reading…
