Skip to main content

ETFs: Dicing mouse turds

The above expression is from Mauldin Economics about the ridiculousness of some ETFs fees. When I started my career many moons ago (like 25 years ago) brokerage fee were substantial, granted virtually no trading was electronic (Don't want to exaggerate either) but the reality is that until the "Big Bang" of 2007 brokerage cost were a substantial numbers.

To this day there remain closet indexers (Vanguard, Jarulosky & many many others) that will charge clients more than 1% in annual management fee, they will not on the other hand charge for each transaction.  The idea was that it would reduce churn (the number of time your broker sells shares from your portfolio to generate commission), but with fees becoming so low the cost of churn is also falling on ordinary (non-ETF) share transactions.  So the question investors have to ask is why bother with fixed commission since even if there is churn in your portfolio the costs are minimum.  Anyway, we are getting away from the real conversation.  ETFs are the pointy shiny bit of the market, its where all the trading is electronic -- machine driven trading occurs (and it has for years...).  Because ETFs are rule based investments -- there are no allocation discussion, limited hedging -- you are simply buying the underlying shares of the ETF.

The race to the bottom in the ETF segment (Exchange Tradable Funds) is the perfect example, with some ETF fee being as low as 0.04% -- so on $10,000 purchase your brokerage fee is $4.00 -- that's not a lot, in fact the firm issuing that ETF is probably losing money.

The issue for investors becomes what are you getting for your money?  That's the hard part, because liquidity and volatility redemption and new issuance are the name of the game; sure you like it when your ETF is trading near PAR (the value of the underlying shares), but what happens if it goes above PAR (don't laugh it happens -- especially for SPROT's Gold ETF), or trades at a discount...

You see dear investor the problem is always the same, when things are good, all these instruments are neat and tidy, when the "solids" hit the fan its much more complicated.

Anyway Mauldin's point is that with the ridiculously low fees that are now on offer from virtually all ETFs its harder for investors to choose because the low hanging fruits comparison are gone!


Have a good weekend

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more