Exchange-Traded Funds
« Previous EntriesAnnual Review of the AFM iShares Retirement Portfolio
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012I have been tracking a retirement portfolio for several years here at AFM. It’s split 30/20/50 between domestic stocks, international stocks, and fixed income, respectively. The domestic stock portion is invested evenly in the 10 sector exchange-traded funds that make up the Dow Jones Total Market Index. The international stock portion was invested in the [...]
How About a Harry Dent ETF? I’ll Pass.
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011How about an EFT based on Harry Dent’s strategy? It’s been around since 2009 but has had poor returns and a 1.5% management fee (not included trading commissions). I think I’ll pass.
Update on the Israelsen 7Twelve Portfolio
Thursday, April 21st, 2011I have been meaning to post an update on the 7Twelve Portfolio but haven’t done so this year. Here are the latest numbers as of this morning’s prices (you can click on the graphic to view a PDF version): For those of you not familiar with the 7Twelve Portfolio, I would suggest you start here: [...]
iShares ETF Returns vs. the Underlying Index
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011I wanted to take a look at how well exchange-traded funds track their underlying indexes. So, I put together a spreadsheet to analyze the monthly returns of the ten iShares ETFs that track the ten sectors of the Dow Jones Total Market Index against their underlying index. I used only full-year data, which began in [...]
Annual Performance Ranking of Various iShares Exchange-Traded Funds
Monday, January 10th, 2011I spent some time putting together the returns of some different asset class (LargeCap, MidCap, SmallCap, International, Emerging Markets, REIT, and Bond) Exchange-Traded Funds offered through iShares. I then took that information and ranked the performance for each year. I only used full-year returns. The earliest year for full-year returns was 2002. Not all of [...]
“7 Twelve” Portfolio October 2010 Update
Monday, November 1st, 2010Here are the total returns for the 7 Twelve Portfolio through October 2010 (Click to see a larger version): NOTES: This portfolio assumes $1,000,000 initial investment with a 5% income withdrawal on December 31, 2009 for a net investment of $950,000. The portfolio also does not include trading costs. The Vanguard REIT Index ETF is [...]
ETFs and Tracking Error
Friday, February 19th, 2010There was an interesting article in today’s WSJ about a recent report issued by Morgan Stanley on how the tracking error between exchange-traded funds and their prospective indexes increased last year: Last year, 54 ETFs showed tracking errors of more than three percentage points, up from just four funds the prior year. And a handful [...]
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