December 2015 – etfsa.co.za monthly South African ETF, ETN and Unit Trust passive index tracking performance survey

Mike Brown, Managing Director, etfSA.co.za.

The Performance Survey for the period ended 31st December 2015, is attached. The Survey measures total investment returns for all 71 JSE listed ETFs/ETNs, and 24 index tracking unit trusts for periods of 3 months to 10 years.

The difficult investment market conditions of the past 1-5 years in the major SA indices is reflected below.

With the bulk of SA investment funds, whether institutional or retail, invested in local equities, fixed interest bonds and the money market, it has been difficult to achieve inflation beating investment returns, particularly after all costs have been taken into account, in recent years.

The increasingly wide access to: global equity markets; international currencies; world commodities; “smart” indices that target a specific investment style or type; and fundamental indices, is making the task of the investor easier. By using index tracking ETFs or passive Unit Trusts as the building blocks in portfolio construction, across a wide range of asset classes, but without the volatility risk generated by an active stock picking manager, the investor can focus on asset allocation to deliver the performance and risk profile required.

Some of these Exchange Traded Products and Unit Trusts offering market beating performance are shown below.

Utilising such products, easily accessible through the JSE or LISP platforms, can enable the investor to focus on strategic asset allocation to deliver significantly better investment returns, with lower risk, particularly in the medium to long term.

The Summary table of the top performing index trackers is shown below, together with the detailed performance table for each tracker fund available to the SA retail investor.

To see the full performance survey click here.