Does Chasing The Lowest Cost ETF Still Make Sense? (2024)

FAQs

Does Chasing The Lowest Cost ETF Still Make Sense? ›

So whether or not you want to chase the lowest cost ETF really depends on your current fees and the value of your investment portfolio. If you aren't on board with low-fee funds yet and you are paying over 0.2% in fees for your average fund, then switching to some of the cheapest ETFs available could be a smart move.

The Bottom Line. Index funds are a popular choice for investors seeking low-cost, diversified, and passive investments that happen to outperform many higher-fee, actively traded funds.

For instance, some ETFs may come with fees, others might stray from the value of the underlying asset, ETFs are not always optimized for taxes, and of course — like any investment — ETFs also come with risk.

ETFs give you the best of both worlds

Instead of buying a handful of individual stocks, investing in an ETF would give you instant exposure to a multitude of stocks. Unlike a managed fund, an ETF does not aim to beat the index, but to match its performance, giving you potentially more predictable returns.

The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of an ETF measures the collective price of an ETF's holdings relative to their respective earnings. A high P/E ratio indicates that the ETF is overvalued.

All investments carry risk. An index fund, like anything else, can potentially lose value over time. That being said, most mainstream index funds are generally considered a conservative way to invest in equities (although there are lesser-known index funds that are thought to carry greater risk).

The S&P 500 is all US-domiciled companies that over the last ~40 years have accounted for ~50% of all global stocks. By just owning the S&P 500 you miss out on almost half of the global opportunity set which is another ~10,000 public companies.

ETFs can be less expensive to own than mutual funds. Plus, they trade continuously throughout exchange hours, and such flexibility may matter to certain investors. ETFs also can result in lower taxes from capital gains, since they're a passive security that tracks an index.

The share prices of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that invest in bonds typically go lower when interest rates rise. When market interest rates rise, the fixed rate paid by existing bonds becomes less attractive, sinking these bonds' prices.

Holding an ETF for longer than a year may get you a more favorable capital gains tax rate when you sell your investment.

What ETF consistently beat the S&P 500? ›

That makes outperforming the S&P 500 on a consistent basis no small task. The one fund that has beaten the index in nine of the past 10 years is the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEMKT: XLK).

Key Takeaways. Many mutual funds are actively managed while most ETFs are passive investments that track the performance of a particular index. ETFs can be more tax-efficient than actively managed funds due to their lower turnover and fewer transactions that produce capital gains.

Because of their wide array of holdings, ETFs provide the benefits of diversification, including lower risk and less volatility, which often makes a fund safer to own than an individual stock. An ETF's return depends on what it's invested in. An ETF's return is the weighted average of all its holdings.

Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification. But the number of ETFs is not what you should be looking at.

Liquidity Risk

Not all ETFs have a large asset base or high trading volume. If you find yourself in a fund that has a large bid-ask spread and low volume you could run into problems with selling your shares. That pricing inefficiency could cost you more money and greater losses.

You expose your portfolio to much higher risk with sector ETFs, so you should use them sparingly, but investing 5% to 10% of your total portfolio assets may be appropriate. If you want to be highly conservative, don't use these at all.

Index funds are popular with investors because they promise ownership of a wide variety of stocks, greater diversification and lower risk – usually all at a low cost. That's why many investors, especially beginners, find index funds to be superior investments to individual stocks.

Key Takeaways

While indexes may be low cost and diversified, they prevent seizing opportunities elsewhere. Moreover, indexes do not provide protection from market corrections and crashes when an investor has a lot of exposure to stock index funds.

The bottom line is that even billionaires recognize the wealth-creation potential of low-cost index funds. Even if you're an active investor in individual stocks -- like Buffett and Dalio are -- rock-solid index funds like these four can help form an excellent backbone for your portfolio.

For instance, in a major sell-off, when an index itself loses value, an index fund holding the underlying securities of the index will also lose value. However, investors who hold on to their fund investments should see the fund value increase as the value of the index itself reverses course and increases.