To simulate various actively - managed
fund tracking errors over thirty years, Professor Sharpe ran a million simulations using Monte Carlo analysis techniques drawing from investment return data since the beginning of the 20th century.
-- the term of investment (in years)-- annual returns — Currency - hedged
fund tracking error — Currency conversion cost — size of currency appreciation / depreciation over the investment term
Not exact matches
Because the
funds may employ a representative sampling strategy and may also invest in securities that are not included in the index, the
funds may experience
tracking error to a greater extent than
funds that seek to replicate an index.
MSCI Indexes with Fair Value Pricing help
fund managers, pension plans and consultants explain the artificial
tracking error between a
fund's fair value adjusted NAV and an MSCI index calculated using closing prices.
This may cause the
fund to experience
tracking errors relative to performance of the index.
The
Fund may have higher
tracking error and / or greater costs than other international investments.
The term
tracking error is defined as the deviation of the performance of an index
fund or exchange - traded
fund (ETF) from the performance of the index it
tracks.
Passive
funds would begin to exhibit increased
tracking errors relative to their benchmarks.
The best solutions to date for figuring out their career outcomes include trawling the Internet to
track postdocs from labs with
funding from National Institutes of Health T32 institutional training grants, which require that all lab personnel be listed, and manually curating a postdoc outcome database using piecemeal data from a variety of sources, both of which are very labor intensive and potentially
error prone.
Should the
fund perform above or below the performance of the S&P 500 index, it would experience
tracking error.
Tracking error happens when a
fund's performance deviates from the performance of an index it seeks to
track.
Passive
funds also aim to keep the
tracking error as low as possible.
«
Tracking error» simply refers to how much an index
fund's return differs from the index it
tracks.
Rick Ferri wrote in his book «All About Index
Funds» that 25bp below the benchmark is regarded as an ideal target.John Bogle also commented in his book «Common Sense on Mutual
Funds» that the
tracking error must be as close to zero as possible for market returns to be as close to 100 %.
With synthetically replicating
funds a company can replicate an index precisely, thus with no or significantly less
tracking error than in most physical ETFs.
After a recent note from a reader, who noticed a large
tracking error in the TD International Index
Fund for 2009, I decided to examine the
tracking error in e-Series
funds.
The
fund makes for an interesting exchange - traded
fund in that it has one of the worst
tracking errors in the business.
In Monday's post, I reviewed the major factors that contribute to an index
fund's
tracking error.
• If you're an index investor, one of the most important things you can learn is a
fund's
tracking error, MoneySense's Dan Bortolotti explains.
In most cases,
tracking error is measured by comparing the index return to the
fund's NAV.
Most of the large
tracking error in the Vanguard MSCI U.S. Broad Market (VUS) was likely the result of currency hedging, but its annual report also cites «differences between the market price and net asset value of the underlying US domiciled Vanguard
funds in which the ETF invests.»
It's the Execution, Stupid would be one of a few articles that looks at the idea of «
tracking error» or how well does an index
fund actually
track the index where it can be noted that in some cases, there can be a little bit of active management in the
fund.
Fixed income: The two largest bond
funds, XBB and XSB, also had
tracking errors lower than their MERs, another excellent result.
The
fund's
tracking error was — 0.64 %, despite an annual fee of just 0.25 %.
Canadian equities: You should expect a Canadian equity index
fund's
tracking error to be about as large as its MER — perhaps a few basis points more.
CWO also hedges the currency exposure of the
fund, which is of dubious benefit given the high costs involved in the form of
tracking errors.
But, as noted in an earlier post, the short performance history showed that these
funds exhibited large
tracking errors.
Since then, the
tracking errors shown by these
funds are simply atrocious.
The
tracking error can be distorted due to the difference in the valuation point of the
fund and the index it
tracks.
· Why Fixed Income
Funds May Fall Short http://t.co/cHmF3hOj On the difficulties of combating
tracking error in fixed income ETFs.
In my opinion, any index
fund that keeps revenue from securities lending should first ensure its
tracking error is no higher than its management fee.
For example, the U.S. version of the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index
Fund (NYSE: EEM, recently launched in Canada as ticker XEM) has posted large
tracking errors over the past three years, lagging its index by 4.8 % in 2007, besting it by 3.3 % in 2008, and trailing again by more than 9 % so far this year.
Many of the stocks are extremely small and illiquid, so any
fund or ETF that tried to replicate the index would suffer from huge
tracking error.
Last week I explained the importance of monitoring an ETF's
tracking error, which is the difference between a
fund's actual performance and the returns of its index.
For 2012, the
fund's MRFP reveals XRE's
tracking error was 76 basis points:
Cap - weighted index
funds are not perfect, but they do have several things going for them: they are cheap and usually have very low
tracking errors.
The most useful measure of an index
fund's performance is its
tracking error, or the difference between the returns of the index and the actual return achieved by the
fund.
But a
fund with a low MER and a consistently high
tracking error is still expensive.
The final 2010 reports appeared earlier this month, and I looked up the
tracking errors of most major index
funds and ETFs.
The table below shows the
tracking error of Canadian equity ETFs and index
funds in -LSB-...]
That's a
tracking error of 73 basis points, which is much lower than you would expect from a
fund that has an MER of 1.07 %, and it closes some of the gap between the Streetwise and TD e-Series
funds.
For BMO
funds, you can visit the web page for the individual ETF, click the Prices & Performance tab, and then click
Tracking Error Chart.
The iShares products are probably the most prudently managed ETFs in the country, with consistently low
tracking errors, even when the
funds are small.
International index
funds and ETFs showed large
tracking errors in 2009.
As an investor, I know that the
tracking error of — 0.50 % is identical to the ETF's fee, which means the
fund was managed almost perfectly.
However, the structure of HXT, which uses a swap to deliver the total return of the S&P / TSX 60 without paying distributions, should guarantee that the
fund's
tracking error will not exceed its 0.08 % MER.
Over the last 10 years, the mutual
fund's
tracking error has amounted to a mere 0.09 % annually, and since its inception in 1999, the
fund has returned 5.15 %, three basis points more than its benchmark index.
These are renewed every month, and if there's a dramatic currency movement between contracts — or if the
fund experiences a large cash inflow or outflow — that can show up as
tracking error.
I expect a
fund to trail its index by an amount equal to its management fee, but if the
tracking error is more than that, then revenue from securities lending might be used to close that gap.
If your index
fund has an MER of 0.25 %, you should expect its
tracking error to be within a basis point or two of that figure.