So what do they do?
The VETH ETF tracks the FTSE Australia 300 Choice Index and attempts to provide low-cost exposure to Australian shares, with an ethical filtering process to exclude shares of companies from particular industries and those which have demonstrated ‘severe controversies’.
The VanEck MVR ETF provides focused exposure to the Australian resources sector, which is a significant part of the Australian economy. This is a low-cost way to invest in the Australian resources industry through a single fund.
If you want to go beyond the basics with the VETH ETF you can learn more about it by reading our free review.
Obviously, an easy way to analyse ETFs like MVR and VETH is by using quantitative methods and judging the fees and past performance (note: past performance is no guarantee of future performance).
At Rask Australia and Best ETFs, our team scores ETFs and funds based on the management fees and we take into account the buy-sell spread and other costs. We’ll then compare these ‘all in’ fees and costs across sectors, strategy types and providers to get a sense of fees across the entire market.
To make this article easier to digest, we’ll just study the fees or ‘management expense ratio’ (MER). Using data for July 2022, the VETH ETF has an MER of 0.17% while the MVR ETF had a yearly fee of 0.35%. As a result, VETH comes out on top. Keep in mind, a more helpful 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 separate 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.
How do they perform?
Performance matters. 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 solid return one year just to generate lacking 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. MVR achieved a three-year average annual total return of 7.51% as of July 2022 but the VETH ETF had not yet got to the three-year milestone. Again, keep in mind we will still consider shorter-term returns if we believe it is a high quality ETF. And as always, past performance is not indicative of future performance.
Now we need to scrutinise the issuer or provider of the ETF. There are too many factors that go into our internal scoring of fund providers to detail here — here’s the quick version: As you guessed, the issuer of the VETH ETF 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. MVR’s provider 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.
Next steps
Did you know we have free reports? View our ASX VETH review and ASX MVR review today.
For us, the MVR ETF rates positively 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 2024 in a free report. Keep reading to find out how to get our analyst’s report emailed to you right now…
