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ETF Trends For 2016: Part 1, Currency-Hedged Products

2015: A Quick Look Back Constant talk of interest rate hikes, the China market correction in August and the start of ‘chip’ credit cards in the U.S. – these are the things I believe will stand out in my mind if asked 10 years from now what happened in the world of finance in 2015. However, for Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) 2015 was all about the continuing growth of Smart Beta strategies, the potential for Non-Transparent Exchange Traded Mutual Funds and new niche funds (like the iShares Exponential Technologies ETF (NYSEARCA: XT ) or the Restaurant ETF (NASDAQ: BITE )). According to ETF.com : As of Dec. 3, 2015, 270 ETFs had launched on U.S. exchanges. That is far beyond the roughly 200 funds that rolled out in 2014, and sets 2015 up to be a record-breaking year. You have to go back nearly a decade to find a year that achieved a similar number of launches. Click to enlarge As shown by the above image from the ICI 2015 Investment Company Fact Book , ETFs continue to grow in assets under management (AUM) and the number of fund offerings for investors. However, ETFs have yet to overtake mutual funds. But at current growth rates, ETFs will see parity soon enough. According to an article from Camilla de Villiers of Thomson Reuters: ETF assets today are expanding by 24% per annum – triple the rate of traditional mutual funds. Notwithstanding their popularity, ETFs have fallen well short of displacing the $16 trillion mutual fund industry. But over the long term, on current rates of growth, mutual funds and ETFs will reach parity at $50 trillion each by 2030. Earlier this year, Schwab commissioned an online study to gauge U.S. investor interest in ETFs (pdf download linked here ). The full report is a great read and full of useful data, but one key point especially stood out. As ETF interest continues to grow, we also see that the most avid users are the tech savvy first adaptors, millennials. Click to enlarge As of publication, we can see (using ETF.com’s Fund Flows tool ) investors in 2015 were not just interested in plain vanilla market cap-weighted funds, but their interest in specialized tools to conquer the market has continued to grow. However, old standbys like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: VOO ), the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (NYSEARCA: AGG ) and the Vanguard Total Stock Market (NYSEARCA: VTI ) do continue to see investor appreciation. But the continuing impressive growth of ETF assets is to some extent old news in the investing world. What we’d like to focus on in the rest of this brief report are 3 key industry trends and their implications for the continued success of ETFs in the future. In this first part, we are going to cover currency-hedged products, while parts 2 and 3 will be on robo investors and expense ratios respectively. Currency-Hedged Products & Iterations On A Theme WisdomTree (NASDAQ: WETF ) launched its first currency-hedged fund in 2006, the Japan Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEARCA: DXJ ), and it took three-and-a-half years for them to launch a second, the Europe Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEARCA: HEDJ ). Clearly the idea didn’t catch fire right away, but it is growing rapidly now. There are now over 50 ETFs with a mandate to not only invest in equities from a region, but also neutralize exposure to fluctuations between that region’s currency and another (often the U.S. dollar). HEDJ and the Deutsche X-trackers MSCI EAFE Hedged Equity ETF (NYSEARCA: DBEF ) even led fund creations for 2015, with $15.77 and $12.67 billion respectively, as concerns around a weakening euro hit investors. This slight change in mandate from your average international-focused index fund can have a dramatic effect on returns. For example, see DXJ and HEDJ’s 5-year returns against two popular non-hedged funds tracking Japan and Europe as well, the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEARCA: EWJ ) and the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (NYSEARCA: VGK ). Click to enlarge To be fair, a currency hedge can be a negative thing for investors as well. When the dollar starts to fall against a foreign currency, currency-hedged investors lose out on the gain from this relationship. As stated by Chris Dieterich of Barron’s : For now, WisdomTree’s stock looks likely to behave as a leveraged play on the dollar. The higher the greenback goes, the more traders will clamor for currency-hedged ETFs. When wondering where the push for these funds came from finally and where they will go from here, we turn to a quote from Greg McFarlane of Investopedia : The upsurge in currency-hedged ETFs is a recent phenomenon spurred by an unmistakable cause – national banking authorities obsessed with inexpensive money. Players are entering the market at an alarming rate. With more such ETFs available to the individual investor, and firms thus forced to compete on price (which is to say, expense ratios), there’s never been a better time to not only expose yourself to international markets, but reduce price movement risks while doing so. Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB ), iShares and WisdomTree lead the fund creation march now, but IndexIQ is the first to look outside the standard currency-hedged product box in the quest for differentiation and further investor assets. Its recently launched lineup of 50% currency-hedged ETFs each hedge approximately 50% of its foreign currency exposure to mitigate the effect of currency fluctuation on USD index returns rather than the traditional 100% hedge. These kinds of iterations on a theme will only offer investors further options when considering a currency-hedged strategy. Stay tuned for part 2 next week, which will focus on the rise of robo investors and how this industry will affect ETF investors and continue to grow in 2016.

Nontraditional Bond Funds: Best And Worst Of December

The Federal Reserve finally raised interest rates in December, and nontraditional bond funds fell in response. The average mutual fund and ETF suffered a 0.75% loss for the month, equaling half of its 1.50% decline for all of 2015. This compares to a lighter 0.32% December loss for the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Total Return Index, which actually managed a 0.55% gain for the year. But that’s not to say that all nontraditional bond funds had a bad December or even a bad year. The month’s top performers posted gains ranging from 1.58% to 2.53%, and although they weren’t necessarily the year’s best funds, their annual gains ranged from 2.38% to 6.65%. There were, of course, also underperforming nontraditional bond funds, with December losses as great as 8.71% and one-year drops of more than 26%. Without further ado, let’s look at this month’s best and worst: Click to enlarge Top Performers in December The three best-performing nontraditional bond mutual funds in December were: ROBAX was December’s top performer, posting gains of 2.53% and pushing its one-year returns to +5.34%. Those annual numbers were outdone by EOAIX, which finished second in December at +1.71% but ahead of ROBAX with 2015 gains of 6.65%. NDNAX, which was the month’s third best performer in the category, notched monthly and annual gains of 1.58% and 2.38%, respectively. Of the month’s three top performers, only EOAIX had a three-year track record, and for the 36 months ending December 31, the fund returned an annualized -0.10%, compared to the category average of +0.14%. The fund’s low three-year beta of 0.27 is attractive, but its -0.40% annualized alpha is not. Its three-year standard deviation of 5.12% is higher than the category average of 3.20%, indicating greater than average volatility. The fund’s three-year Sharpe ratio was 0.00. Worst Performers in December The three worst-performing nontraditional bond mutual funds in December were: HNRZX was easily December’s worst performer, posting losses of 8.71% for the month and pushing its 2015 losses to an ugly 26.31%. The fund posted huge gains of 33.23% and 34.52% in 2012 and 2013, but then an 8.47% loss in 2014 ahead of its 2015 woes, which have sunk its three-year annualized returns into the red at -3.19%. The fund is extremely volatile, with a three-year standard deviation of 16.24%, and that and its -1.17 beta and -0.37% alpha combine to give it a three-year Sharpe ratio of -0.13. DRSLX is another fund with minus signs across its returns table. The fund lost 3.92% in December and 7.13% in 2015, bringing its three-year annualized returns to -2.56%. It has extremely low (inverse) correlation to the benchmark, with a -0.07 three-year beta, but an attractive -2.43% three-year alpha. Its standard deviation of 4.48% is the lowest of the three funds with three-year track records reviewed this month, but still higher than the category average, and its three-year Sharpe ratio stood at -0.57. Finally, HYND, the third-worst performer in December, posted a monthly loss of 3.82%. The fund launched too recently to have a three-year track record, but its one-year returns for 2015 came in at -5.66%. Past performance does not necessarily predict future results. Jason Seagraves and Meili Zeng contributed to this article.

Market Neutral Funds: Best And Worst Of December

Market neutral mutual funds and ETFs returned an average of -0.06% in December and -0.10% for the entire year of 2015. The combined category’s annualized three-year returns stood at +1.01% through December 31, with 4.16% annualized volatility (“standard deviation”) and a 0.09 Sharpe ratio. The funds, which are designed to move irrespective of the broad stock and bond markets, have done their job in terms of their three-year beta relative to the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, which stood at 0.04, and generated 0.98% alpha over that time. Click to enlarge Best Performers in December The three best-performing market neutral mutual funds in December were: BTAL, which initially launched in September 2011, returned +3.35% in December, making it the top-performing ’40 Act market-neutral fund for the month. For the year, however, BTAL gained just 0.15%, and for the three-year period ending December 31, its annualized returns stood at -2.10%. Its three-year beta of 1.04 means it had a high correlation to the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. However, its -2.75% alpha was put you behind the index, and its above-average volatility (8.63% three-year standard deviation) resulted in a -0.15 three-year Sharpe ratio. FXMAX ranked second among market neutral funds in December, with monthly gains of 2.93%. But over the one- and three-year periods ending December 31, the fund’s returns were unattractive at -7.72% and -4.42% (annualized), respectively. Its three-year beta (0.46) and standard deviation (5.41%) were better than BTAL’s, but its three-year alpha (-5.07%) and Sharpe ratio (-0.82) were worse. Finally, the popular MNA ETF ranked third in December, with returns of +2.41%. In 2015, the ETF gained 1.45%, easily beating its peers. Its three-year annualized returns of +4.36% were comprised entirely of alpha (4.62%) relative to the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, since the fund did its job by producing a three-year beta of 0.00 on the nose. MNA’s three-year standard deviation of 3.65% was by far the lowest of any fund reviewed this month, and its three-year Sharpe ratio of 1.27 towered above the competition. Worst Performers in December The three worst-performing market neutral mutual funds in December were: TFSMX was December’s worst performer among market neutral mutual funds and ETFs, returning -3.78% and dropping its returns for the full year into negative territory at -2.96%. The fund launched in 2004 and returned an annualized 0.83% for the three years ending December 31, with a fair 0.24 beta, 0.55% alpha, and 4.96% volatility. Its three-year Sharpe ratio stood at 0.18 as of year’s end. QuantShares’ SIZ and MOM both ranked in the bottom three, somewhat offsetting the firm’s first-place finish with BTAL. But while SIZ and MOM posted respectively disappointing one-month returns of -2.95% and -2.50% in December, MOM’s annual gains of 17.42% in 2015 made it the clear standout of the six funds reviewed this month. Indeed, MOM’s three-year annualized returns of 4.19% were only slightly bested by the more-famed MNA, but on the negative side, its 1.14 three-year beta may be less than appealing to investors looking to diversify away from fixed income. By this basis SIZ, which returned an annualized -5.07% for the three years ending December 31, looked better with its 0.13 three-year beta. SIZ and MOM had respective three-year alphas of -5.26% and +2.46%, with respecitve volatility of 6.25% and 8.45%, resulting in Sharpe ratios of -0.81 for SIZ and 0.48 for MOM. Past performance does not necessarily predict future results. Jason Seagraves and Meili Zeng contributed to this article.