By David Snowball

Dear friends,

It’s been an especially distressing month. Rapid and widespread flooding following a hard winter destroyed the lives and livelihoods of many thousands of good folks in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Levees failed, bridges and roads were swept away, homes and equipment left mangled. Many are in despair at the loss of thousands of newborn calves, with loss to private and public property exceeding a billion dollars. At the same time, Cyclone Idai, the second-worst in the region’s history, swept across eastern Africa, likely killing more than a thousand and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and hungry. While it is only “weather,” persistent patterns in the weather define our climate and the pattern of the past five years has been increasing numbers of extreme weather events.  We really need to work together to figure out how best to manage these challenges.

Speaking of challenges, presidential wannabees are beginning to descend on Iowa. We’ve even got a website to keep track of the invasion. There are days when you can’t get your oil changed without tripping over one of them. Okay, so here’s our little state secret. You know all those pictures where would-be presidents have donned plaid shirts with rolled-up sleeves and are sitting down to some “real Iowa food”?

Yeah, actually we don’t eat any of that crap. It started as a sort of party game called “what do you think we can convince those rubes to stuff in their mouths?” which ended up with deep-fried, bacon-studded pork nuggets on a stick and four pound, two foot wide pork tenderloin sandwiches. (Had I mentioned our experiment with deep-fried butter? Took out two Republicans and a Democrat with that one.)

Thanks!

As ever, to the 30,000 or so of you who spend part of your month with us.

To the folks on the discussion board, who daily share Virtual Excedrin and chuckles.

To the journalists with whom we’ve had increasingly frequent conversations. I’m hopeful they help us all be smarter.

To Marty (We know what you’re looking for. Be patient, the profile is on the way), the good folks at Gardey Financial for their years of support, Richard, Himu from Florida, Peter from Medina, Paul K., James (extra strength Exedrin – Thanks!), and Jonathan.

Thanks, most especially, to the small but growing circle of folks who’ve chosen to make a (generally modest, universally appreciated) monthly contribution in support of MFO. We think of you – Doug, Deborah, Greg, William, Brian, David – as “our subscribers” and are hopeful of sharing a small thank-you later this week. Sadly, I have almost no snail mail addresses so look for a query in your inbox!

MFO upcoming

David, Charles and Ed will be in Chicago, at or near the Morningstar conference, in the second week of May. Please do drop us a note if you’d like to catch up while we’re there.

Chip and I will be in western Ireland during the first 10 days of June. She’s masterminded a day-by-day itinerary for our time around Dingle, Doolin and Galway. If you’ve got strong opinions about “can’t miss” meals or experiences, let her know and we’ll share pics!

Given our sense that the investment climate feels nearly as parlous as the physical one, we’re hopeful of highlighting more, and more interesting, safe harbor and ESG investment opportunities. If you’ve spotted something that you think we should know more about (that happens a lot), please do pass along your reflections and we’ll see what we can learn.

As the One Minute Manager guy, Kenneth Blanchard, notes and the Make Me Smart podcast guy, Kai Ryssdal, repeats: “none of us is as smart as all of us.”

Cheers!

By David Snowball

Or, since I teach at a historically Swedish-Lutheran college, I might use the original Swedish term: I was döstädning my portfolio.

By way of background, my income comes from teaching at the aforementioned Augustana College; it’s exceedingly secure but has not increased much, in real or inflation-adjusted terms, in quite a while. It has “bond-like” qualities. I invest about 13% pretax for retirement, the college has a match that adds about 10% and I squirrel away around 10% of my take-home pay each month. Our home in Davenport is small, snug and affordable. Our cars are used but clean and efficient. Our splurges often enough involve live music and local brews somewhere in town.

Annually I share a bit about how I’ve been thinking about my own portfolios and what I’ve done about them. The short version, most years, is that I think “gosh, markets are weird” and then continue making steady but modest automatic monthly contributions. If that studied calm left me with a portfolio that’s a bit smaller than it might have been, it also left me with the time and energy for a life that’s a bit richer.

Here’s the discipline:

1. work out the strategic plan
2. work out the tactical plan
3. execute the plan
4. don’t get all smart and twitchy and screw up the plan (again)

The strategic plan is the big picture and it mostly involves my asset allocation and funding levels. In my retirement portfolio, I invest about two-thirds in equity and one-third in income. My equity exposure tends to have abnormally large commitments to international equity (about half of the total) and emerging markets (nearly half of the international piece). While I prefer to tilt toward the value, size and quality factors, the fact that large, low-quality and growth have been outperforming keeps tilting it back. My income exposure tends, likewise, to have more international and non-investment-grade bond exposure, partly through the TIAA Real Estate portfolio.

Over the long term, I’ve been able to meet my goal of 5-6% real returns which is what it will take to give me a good chance of managing 25 years in retirement.

In my non-retirement portfolio, I invest about half in equity and half in income. I tend to have a strong tilt toward international, small, value and emerging markets. It is not a tax-efficient allocation. Here’s why: I don’t have a substantial savings account and haven’t for years. I loathe the idea of locking in losses, which is what happens when my credit union’s saving account pays 0.10% APR and my cost-of-living rises at 10-20 times that rate. So instead, I have a substantial commitment to several exceedingly low volatility income funds that return 2-4% annually complemented by a couple slightly riskier income-oriented funds that aren’t hostage to US interest rates.

In general, for non-retirement investors, stocks should be treated like cooks treat habañero peppers: cautiously and with a clear understanding that a little bit is good and a lot is disastrous. Asset allocation research from T. Rowe consistently illustrate the risk: stock-light portfolios make a bit above 5% annually, stock-heavy portfolios make a bit below 6% annually while nearly quadrupling your risk.

The tactical plan is the selection of individual investments needed to carry out the strategic plan. In general, my experience and my reading of the professional and research literature make me comfortable favoring actually active over passive; risk-aware investors over market-beating ones; small, driven firms over large, asset-loving ones; managerial records that are respectable over entire market cycles rather than great during short, arbitrary periods; and advisors whose hearts, souls and family fortunes are invested next to my pittance.

I execute the plan by setting up automatic monthly investments. My personal record of self-discipline is no better than yours; anything that I don’t do automatically, I don’t do.

I avoid getting too smart for my own good by ignoring my portfolio for months on end and refusing to change it for years on end. As long as the manager remains faithful, I do except when there’s a change to my strategic plan.

And that’s where the döstädning kicks in.

Vast changes in my retirement portfolio. For years, Augustana offered a 403(b) retirement plan that provided benefit access to all of TIAA-CREF, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, American Century and Lutheran Brotherhood. Rather more than 800 funds. That system worked very poorly for most employees of the college and, about five years ago, I participated in a complete redesign of the system to offer just a couple dozen high quality choices, with auto-enrollment and auto-escalation provisions. That worked splendidly for 98% of the college’s employees; I was part of the 2%. The new system shut down access to T. Rowe and Fidelity, leaving me with a tri-part portfolio of TIAA-CREF (funded by the college’s contribution) and Fidelity and Price (funded by my personal withholding). Between the three, I owned just over 30 funds. Given that I can no longer add to either Price or Fidelity it was time to change.

Change #1: I moved all of my Fidelity money over to T. Rowe Price, which reduced the number of funds I was following from 22 to 10.

Change #2: I moved 90% of my Price money into T. Rowe Price Retirement 2025 (TRHHX) then recreated my traditional tilt toward the emerging markets by buying Emerging Markets Discovery (PRIJX) and Emerging Markets Bond (PREMX). All three funds are MFO Great Owl funds, meaning that they’ve landed in the top 20% of their peer groups for risk-adjusted returns in every measurement period longer than one year. Two of the three are also five-star funds under Morningstar’s system and tw0 (2o25 is Silver, EM Bond is Bronze) have received the endorsement of the Morningstar analysts. Morningstar’s machine-learning system projects a Silver assignment for EM Discovery.

Strategic changes in my non-retirement portfolio. I wrote, last month, about the sustained threat posed by climate destabilization. Climate destabilization triggers four different kinds of risks which impact our portfolios as well as our lives. Some of those risks (for example, regulatory and reputational) strike me as pretty immediate, and all seem to be growing in intensity. We made that assessment in our March issue. In our April issue, we’ve worked to identify the sustainable/ESG funds which marry the best long-term performance (measured by MFO and Morningstar ratings) with the most principled portfolios (measured by Morningstar sustainability ratings and Fossil Free Funds).

From that analysis, I concluded that the most compelling ESG equity fund is Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth (BAFWX). In response to that finding, I decided to (a) add BAFWX to my portfolio and (b) provide an updated but condensed version of Dennis Baran’s fine profile of the fund. For folks wanting richer detail, Dennis’s original profile is still the place to turn.

In the months ahead, I’ll look to make a comparable addition to the income-oriented part of the portfolio. No one stands out in the way a couple of the equity ESG funds do, so research is ongoing. Maybe Saturna Sustainable Bond (SEBFX)?  Maybe learn a bit more about Zeo Sustainable Credit Fund after its likely launch next month? I really don’t want returns below the rate of inflation (think 2% or more) or to be hostage to the US credit cycle (see above), which means look for “credit” funds or ones with a globally diversified portfolio. I’ll work on it, and share.

– Growth –

Artisan International Value (ARTKX): about the best of the international value funds, the fund got dinged for weak relative performance in 2017 (when it made 24%, for gosh sakes) and 2018 (when it trailed its peers by 1%). No worries there, though the evolution of the management team bears watching: founding managers Samra and O’Keefe have split the responsibilities, with O’Keefe taking custody of Artisan Global Value and Samra taking responsibility here. In each case, they added younger co-managers last year. Planning for change is good, so I cheer them. Now the question is, how will the changes play out? I’ll watch. Closed to new investors.

Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth (BAWFX): new for 2019! Check out the profile.

Grandeur Peak Global Reach (GPROX): the core fund in Grandeur Peak’s global micro- and small-cap lineup. Below average volatility, well above-average returns, four stars at Morningstar and the equivalent of four stars at MFO. Closed to new investors.

Grandeur Peak Global Microcap (GPMCX): Grandeur Peak’s smallest and most venturesome fund, the fund was subject to a prelaunch subscription, a quota on how much you could invest, and a hard closure on the day of launch. I find it fascinating, and it’s returned rather more than 8% a year so far.

Intrepid Endurance (ICMAX): I love the discipline (absolute value, small cap focused) and am increasingly worried about the execution. While ICMAX finished in the top 5% in 2018, its long-time manager Jayme Wiggins left on short notice in September, president Mark Travis filled in for four months, and now three young managers have ascended. The managers haven’t found a use for their 70% cash stake leaving them with a five-year record that trails, oh, my savings account at the credit union. Former managers Eric Cinnamond and Jayme Wiggins have filed to launch a new fund using the Endurance style with slightly lower fees; I’ll keep watch there to see whether I’ll move the money to the original Endurance managers.

– Growth & Income –

Seafarer Overseas Growth & Income (SIGIX): Seafarer is a long-time holding that underwent several evolutionary changes in 2018. Andrew Foster has been the lead manager and pursues a sort of growth-as-a-reasonable price discipline, which led to exceptional returns and muted volatility. With the evolution of the EMs themselves, Andrew instituted two changes at the fund: his two long-time associates are now recognized as co-managers and they are structuring distinctive value and growth components into portfolio. Where, for example, value stocks might have coincidentally been 10% of the total portfolio, now they might consciously be a quarter or more of it.

Matthews Asia Growth & Income (MACSX): one of the most conservative ways to invest in Asian stocks, MACSX tends to have solid absolute returns in rising markets and outstanding relative returns in falling ones. In 2018, its 10% loss bested 80% of its peers.

FPA Crescent (FPACX): managed by Steven Romick, Crescent has long been a “go anywhere we can find exceptional value” fund with a superb record. Mr. Romick, like most of the folks at FPA, pursues an “absolute value” orientation that I find compelling. At base, the absolute value investors say “we’ll only buy if we’re offering an attractive security priced with a compelling margin of safety, absent that, we’re going to wait.” The fund had a rare and substantial stumble in 2018. I’ll wait to hear Mr. Romick’s discussion of it, but I’m not making long-term decisions based on short-term performance.

– Income –

Matthews Asia Strategic Income (MAINX): Teresa Kong strikes me as frighteningly smart, and she’s done a fine job. Morningstar switched their peer group last year from “international” to “emerging,” which makes the relative data weird: Morningstar says they finished at the 50^th percentile over the past five years but also that they’ve substantially outperformed their peers in each of those years. Uhhh …

RiverPark Short Term High Yield (RPHYX): my lowest volatility holding, RPHYX typically churns out 2-4% with its maximum-ever drawdown of 0.6%. That constancy has made it an MFO Great Owl. Closed to new investors.

RiverPark Strategic Income (RSIVX): nominally the next-step-out on the risk-return spectrum from the folks who managed RPHYX, which originally aspired to about double its sibling’s return. It hasn’t really managed that over time, though it did trounce RPHYX in two individual years. Much lower Sharpe, much higher maximum drawdown.

T. Rowe Price Strategic Income (RPSIX): a globally diversified T. Rowe Price fund-of-income-funds, with a slice of dividend-paying stocks. It lost 2.6% in 2018 which isn’t surprising given its exposure, however conservative, to stocks and EM bonds.

Bottom line: down about 9% in 2018, with everything touching international equities seeing double-digit declines. It happens. Five goals for 2019:

1. sort through the raft of retirement plan changes announced by Augustana (few of which thrilled me) to reassert control over my 403(b);
2. rebalance back to my target asset allocation, which means moving some international money into the Brown Advisory fund;
3. monitor two funds closely;
4. search for a suitable ESG income fund; and
5. attend to the new management configurations at Artisan and Seafarer

By David Snowball

The last substantial decline in the US stock market occurred between 2007-09. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) declined by 50.9% and remained under water for 52 months. Vanguard International Stock Market Index (VGTSX) fell 58.5% and did not recover for 114 months. Investors in Vanguard Emerging Market Index (VEIEX) would be at least a little envious of the fact that VGTSX investors were in the red for almost ten years, since they were at a loss for more than 10 years after their portfolio hit bottom. Investors who hewed to the “stocks for the long-term” mantra and faithfully held their VEIEX shares ended the decade with an average annual loss of 0.1%.

The good news is that it’s over: almost all diversified funds have managed to recover all of the losses they suffered and then some.

The bad news is that it could have been much worse. In major bear markets, stock valuations often drop from “way too high” at the outset, rocket past “entirely reasonable” and crash around “horrifyingly low,” which sets up a rebound and a new bull market. That didn’t exactly happen in 2007-09, valuations were so historically high before the crash that a 50% decline didn’t return them to “horrifyingly low.” At the worst of the decline, stock valuations were no lower than “about reasonable.”

Here’s the Shiller p/e ratio for the US stock market from the late 19^th century to the early 21^st century. Shiller’s p/e tries to eliminate some of the distortions caused by short-lived profit spikes, since those spikes create the temporary illusion that market valuations are fabulously low.

The median Shiller p/e for that 140-year period is 16.9; the depth of the sharpest percentage decline since the Great Depression brought the market’s p/e down to just 15 in March 2009. If the market bottomed at the levels typical of major bear markets, it would have been in the single digits.

It may be that we will never see single-digit valuations ever again because, you know, technology and algorithms and the Fed. Those of us depending on relatively modest retirement portfolios to keep us from spending our Golden Years in a repurposed dumpster out behind the Walmart, might want to approach such optimism with caution.

The worse news is that another crash is coming. That’s not a market-timing call, it’s simply a report on 2000 years of investment history. Markets climb, often irrationally. Markets fall, often irrationally. The past 10 years have seen a nearly unbroken rise in domestic equity markets, punctuated by a series of minor hiccups:

Year	Duration of the decline	Extent of the decline
2010	5 months	16%
2011	3 months	19
2015	2 months	15
2015-16	3 months	13
2018-19	6+ months*	20

* as of 29 March 2019, the domestic Total Market and S&P 500 indexes are within about 2% of their all-time highs from September 2018. Having posted its best quarter in decade, the correction feels mostly “done.”

The folks at Yardeni Research have published a series of graphs that illustrate the extent, timing and severity of market declines over the past century. Their work gives you a sense of how inconsequential all the Sturm und Drang over the past decade has been:

The simple question is, are you ready for the next round? The problem is that many of the most popular investment options available today didn’t exist in mid-2007. Almost half of all existing mutual funds (3340 of 7348) launched after October 1, 2007, which means we don’t have a record of how they handled the last really extended bear market.

We can help

We can, however, get a snapshot of how they did during the second-worst stretch in recent market history, the 2018-19 correction. I used the fund screener at MFO Premium to show the risk-adjusted performance of all funds and ETFs over the past six months, which captures both the autumn decline and the winter rebound. Our guess is that the performance of funds during a short, sharp cycle will give you an insight into how they might perform in a long, grinding cycle later.

The statistics below measure fund performance from September 1, 2018 – February 28, 2019 so they capture the few weeks before the market peak and exclude March, 2019. Here are the ten funds (well, nine funds and an ETF) that had the best risk-adjusted performance during that mini-cycle.

	Maximum drawdown	Sharpe ratio	Ulcer Index
Benchmark: Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTSMX)	-14.3%	-0.39	7.6
Spectrum Low Volatility (SVARX)	-2.1	0.78	1.2
SEI Multi-Asset Income (SIOAX)	-2.8	0.57	1.5
Fidelity Advisor Series Growth Opportunities (FAOFX)	-10.4	0.46	6.5
FAM Equity-Income (FAMEX)	-8.1	0.43	4.1
Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (SPLV)	-6.9	0.42	3.1
AMG Yacktman Focused (YAFFX)	-4.7	0.41	2
Marshfield Concentrated Opportunity (MRFOX)	-8	0.41	4.1
Calvert Equity (CSIEX)	-8.4	0.38	4
AMG Yacktman (YACKX)	-4.9	0.35	2.1
Akre Focus (AKREX)	-8.5	0.29	4.4

MFO Premium search string: Mutual Funds + ETFs, U.S. Equity + Mixed Asset, Only  Great Owl Funds, display 09/2018-02/2019. N = 203 funds/ETFs

To test the hypothesis that performance during the autumn-to-winter cycle might help us identify funds and ETFs that will serve us well during an extended bear, we then looked at the relative performance of each of these funds, upside, downside and risk-return balance, from the time of its inception (periods ranging from 3 – 32 years) to now. The table below documents our findings.

Performance since inception

	Age	APR	Max DD	Recov	Std Dev	DS Dev	Ulcer	Bear	Sharpe	MFO
Spectrum Low Volatility	5	5	1	2	1	1	1	1	5	5
SEI Multi-Asset Income	7	4	1	2	1	1	1	1	5	5
Marshfield Concentrated Opportunity	3	5	1	2	2	1	1	1	5	5
Akre Focus	10	5	1	3	1	1	1	1	5	5
AMG Yacktman	27	5	1	1	2	2	1	2	5	5
Calvert Equity	32	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	4	5
AMG Yacktman Focused	22	5	1	1	3	2	1	2	5	5
Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF	8	5	1	1	1	1	1	1	5	5
FAM Equity-Income	23	5	3	3	2	2	2	3	5	4
Fidelity Advisor Series Growth Opportunities	5	5	1	5	4	2	2	3	5	5

In each case, the values represent the performance of the fund since its inception. Since being splendid for a long time is even harder than being splendid for a while, we highlight each fund’s age. In all cases, blue represents the best possible rating, green is second best and so on down to red.

What do the columns mean? APR is “annual percentage return,” so blue is the top 20% of its peer group since inception. Max DD is “maximum drawdown,” so blue is in the 20% of peer funds with the smallest worst-case performance. Recov is “time to recover from your max DD,” standard deviation is a measure of “normal” volatility, DownSide deviation is a measure of a fund’s tendency to move downward, the Ulcer Index combines measures of how far a fund falls and how long it stays down, bear is a fund’s normal performance in bear market months, Sharpe is a very common measure of a fund’s risk-return performance and MFO is a variation of Sharpe that strongly rewards funds that hold up well in volatile markets.

These are just the comparative rank data (top 20%, top 40% and so on). If you’re geeky enough to want to work with the raw data as well, that’s all in the screener at MFO Premium. For our immediate purpose, the relative performance was the relevant part.

Here’s the takeaway: the funds’ short-term resilience seems to reflect their long-term prospects. The funds that excelled in the fall and winter have also excelled, with some consistency and across a variety of measures, since their inception.

Where do we go from here?

If you’re intrigued and have access, “to MFO Premium,” go there and recreate the search string so you can see the full details rather than my quick summary. If you’re intrigued but haven’t sought access to Premium, here are the highlights of resilient funds and ETFs in a variety of categories.

Zero is not my hero! All equity funds and ETFs with a Sharpe ratio above zero

State Street SPDR SSGA US Large Cap Low Volatility Index ETF	LGLV	Multi-Cap Core
T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation	PRWCX	Growth allocation
Legg Mason Low Volatility High Dividend ETF	LVHD	Multi-Cap Value
Madison Dividend Income	BHBFX	Equity Income
Invesco DJIA Dividend ETF	DJD	Equity Income
Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income	FAYZX	Flexible Portfolio
BMO Low Volatility Equity	MLVEX	Multi-Cap Value
BlackRock iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol USA ETF	USMV	Multi-Cap Core
Nuance Mid Cap Value	NMVLX	Mid-Cap Core
MFS Low Volatility Equity	MLVAX	Multi-Cap Core
Fidelity SAI US Low Volatility Index	FSUVX	Multi-Cap Core
Vanguard Wellesley Income	VWINX	Conservative allocation
TCW New America Premier Equities	TGUSX	Multi-Cap Growth
First Trust Value Line Dividend Index	FVD	Multi-Cap Value
Invesco S&P MidCap Low Volatility ETF	XMLV	Mid-Cap Core
Champlain Mid Cap	CIPMX	Mid-Cap Growth
Virtus KAR Small-Cap Growth	PXSGX	Small-Cap Growth
Jackson Square SMID-Cap Growth	DCGTX	Small-Cap Growth
T Rowe Price Dividend Growth	PRDGX	Large-Cap Core
Jensen Quality Growth	JENSX	Large-Cap Core
YCG Enhanced	YCGEX	Large-Cap Core
State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF	SPYD	Equity Income
AMG River Road Focused Absolute Value	AFAVX	Multi-Cap Value
ProShares Russell 2000 Dividend Growers ETF	SMDV	Small-Cap Core

The small standing tall: the top five small cap funds

Citizens of the World: The Top Five Global Funds

Beyond these shares: the top five international funds

… or maybe a few more.

Striking a healthy balance: the top five balanced funds

… yes, I know. Think of it as an Easter Egg.

On the other hand: the top ten alternatives funds

The rewards of virtue: the top ten ESG funds

A socially responsible money market. Who knew?

Passively active: the top ten active ETFs

By David Snowball

I teach about propaganda and persuasion for a living. “Propaganda” in the Hitler, Goebbels, rise of the Nazis sense of the term. It’s an important and fascinating study, though it seems reasonably tangential to contemporary investing.

Then I started reading about ETF marketing.

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1937-1942, was an honest attempt to help American citizens detect and dissect trickery and deceptive messages. They were, then as now, rife. The Institute’s most famous publication was The Fine Art of Propaganda (1939) which offered a “candid and impartial study of the devices and apparent objectives of specialists in the distortion of public opinions.” They devoted a chapter to each of seven tricks:

• Name-calling
• Glittering generalities
• Transfer
• Testimonial
• Plain folks
• Card stacking
• Bandwagon

That last one, the bandwagon, “is a means for making us follow the crowd and accept a propagandist’s program as a whole and without examining the evidence for and against it. His theme is: ‘Everybody’s doing it. Why not you?’ His techniques range from the street-corner medicine show to those of the vast pageant” (105).

So here’s the propagandist’s tale: “passively-managed ETFs are taking over the world. The only fools who invest in futile attempts by active managers to beat the market are old men in frock coats and gardenia-scented spinsters!” Those are buttressed by analyses showing the passive strategies will control over half the markets assets by mid-2019.

But why?

Excellent question! My skepticism about passive cap-weighted or debt-weighted index investing, especially through ETFs, has had three sources:

1. it incorrectly focuses on “market beating returns,” which is misleading since my investment goal isn’t to beat the market. It’s to fund a comfortable existence, which market-beating returns might or might not achieve.
2. cap-weighted strategies tend to thrive in rising markets, and virtually the entire period of ETF ascent has been during a 10+ year bull market.
3. it might ultimately undermine the ability of the market to manage major downturns by draining liquidity; that is, ETFs hold no cash reserves to deploy during downturns which risks fostering algorithm-fed downward spirals.

Many, including many who market ETFs, disagree.

A series of recent reports suggest that marketers might be consciously gaming the system to generate a self-sustaining bandwagon effect. Take the case of one of the most explosive ETF launches ever … a JPMorgan Japan fund?

The Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) was the ETF to capture the largest inflows this week―$1.2 billion―but the week belonged to another fund, the JPMorgan BetaBuilders Japan ETF (BBJP). Inflows for BBJP totaled more than $1 billion during the period, which is remarkable considering the fund had less than $10 million in assets a little over a week ago. (‘BBJP’ 2nd-Fastest ETF To $1B Assets, 28 July 2018)

How can you explain a billion dollars swooping in over the course of a week? A carefully constructed bandwagon and, it seems, just one of many. Asjylyn Loder of The Wall Street Journal reports:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched an exchange-traded fund last June that invests in Japanese stocks. The fund raised $1.7 billion in six weeks, making it one of the fastest ETFs ever to surpass $1 billion in assets.

The biggest buyers: JPMorgan’s clients.

By buying JPMorgan’s ETFs on behalf of customers, JPMorgan’s private bank and wealth management divisions helped the JPMorgan BetaBuilders Japan reach $3.3 billion in assets by the end of the year.

It wasn’t an isolated case. JPMorgan’s ETFs raised $15.6 billion last year, most of it from JPMorgan affiliates … The tide of client money helped boost the New York bank from an ETF also-ran to the 10th largest ETF issuer. By the end of 2018, JPMorgan affiliates owned 53% of the firm’s ETF assets, and the bank was the top shareholder of 23 of its 31 ETFs.

JPMorgan isn’t the only ETF issuer that steers clients into in-house funds. Almost every issuer has repackaged some of their ETFs into other investment products … The practice has even earned its own nickname: BYOA, for “Bring Your Own Assets.” (JPMorgan ETFs Are a Hit, but With Its Own Clients, 11 March 2019 – with thanks to Ms. Loder for her excellent reporting and Ted, the MFO discussion board’s senior member, for urging us to highlight it)

That essentially corroborates the investigative work done by Elizabeth Kashner at ETF.com. In “Tough Times for New ETFs” (2/21/2019), she makes two interesting points: ETF liquidations are rising steadily and almost no new ETF launches lead to sustainable asset levels. In general, the only ETFs make serious money are the ETFs that are used in the portfolios of other funds. Beyond that, for all the hype and pageantry, it looks like the market has peaked.

Major investors have reached the same conclusion, even if most small investors are still in thrall to the call of “the winning team.” Ira Artman, longtime friend of MFO, shared the conclusions of “Fidelity’s annual global institutional investor survey … over the next six years institutional investors expect to shift their portfolios toward more active strategies and smart beta products — all at the expense of traditional passive. The survey includes responses from 905 institutional investors in 25 countries” (“The Traditional Passive Fund is a Dying Species,” 18 March 2019).

Bottom line: the argument “but everyone’s doing it!” is the hallmark of the reasoning of a petulant, hormonally-imbalanced teen. That’s not really a good reason to use the same logic to drive your investment decisions, is it? And yet, it works. It worked for demagogues in the 1930s. It works for convincing people to read, usually the first chapter of, mediocre nonsense (a New York Times bestseller!) And it drives marketing money on the web, where popular seven-year-olds can claim a $20 million payday because everybody who’s anybody is watching them.

“ETFs are winning” is not a reason to buy ETFs, especially when “winning” is just a synonym for “attracting money.” The hallmarks of good investments are that they meet your needs, make sense in your world and will serve you in good times and bad. Very few active funds bear those hallmarks, and very few ETFs do.

Caution is especially warranted when the bandwagon rolls into town with hype and hoopla and cheering crowds. That’s often a good signal to put your hand securely over your wallet and move quietly toward an exit.

Next month MFO will, by the way, highlight actively-managed ETFs that have the greatest record of strong, consistent achievement. Do drop by.