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That has been somewhat reversed here in 2009 with, on an annualized basis, the traditional index funds actually adding about $40 billion, expected to add about $40 million in cash flow—where for the first time ever, exchange-traded funds are actually having cash outflow roughly in the amount of $30 billion annualized this year so far. Whether that is a turn in the tide, only time will tell.
Now, if exchange-traded funds are a brilliant business model, are they a good investment model or, as this next slide asks, are they a flawed investment model? And we know they are a good business model. We know they are great for fund marketers. We know they are great for brokers. We know they are great for investment advisers. We know they are great for institutional speculators. But the question is, what are ETFs doing for individual investors?
That is an interesting question and we have done some research on it, which we are going to unveil here in a little bit for the first time. I come back now to the difference between an exchange-traded fund and a traditional index fund. An exchange-traded fund, to use the quotation from the original ad for the SPDR [NYSE Arca: SPY]: “And now you can trade the market all day long in real time.” That is what the original SPDR was advertised as doing. I’m not exactly sure why anybody would want to trade the market all day long in real time, but that is their slogan.
In many respects, as this chart shows, that idea of using ETFs, exchange-traded funds, for speculation has come true, come more than true, come true in spades. You can look at it any way you want, but look at those turnover rates for share turnover in the SPDRs there. And they are in second: 10,105% turnover last year. Just think of that. There are about 711 million shares outstanding of the SPDRS and they have 8 billion shares traded last year―8 billion shares of SPDRS traded.
And that doesn’t seem to be particularly good, even for those investors. Because while the SPDR had a five-year return of -1.9% a year—it’s been a difficult market—the average investor in SPDRs had a return of -8.2% a year. So you tell me whether all that trading is good for investors or is not good for investors. You can see what you would expect.
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