IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/assmgt/v13y2012i3d10.1057_jam.2012.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An analytical performance comparison of exchange-traded funds with index funds: 2002–2010

Author

Listed:
  • Mohammad Sharifzadeh
  • Simin Hojat

Abstract

Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs) have been gaining increasing popularity in the investment community, as evidenced by their high growth both in the number of ETFs created and their net assets since 2000. As ETFs are in nature similar to index mutual funds, in this article we examine whether this growing demand for ETFs can be explained through their outperformance as compared with index mutual funds. We consider the population of all ETFs with inception dates before 2002 and then for each ETF found all the passive index mutual funds that had the same investment style as the selected ETF and had an inception date before 2002. This led to a sample of 230 paired matches for all the styles. Within each investment style we matched every ETF with all the passive index funds in that investment style and compared the performances of the matched pairs in terms of Sharpe Ratios and risk-adjusted buy and hold total returns for the period 2002–2010. We then applied the Wilcoxon signed rank test to examine whether ETFs had better performances than index mutual funds during the sample period. We conducted the test both within each style and for all the styles put together. In terms of Sharpe Ratio, out of the 12 styles included in the sample, for 5 styles the conclusion was that ETFs outperformed index funds, for 3 of the styles US Broad market, US large cap growth and US Reits index funds outperformed ETFs, and for 4 styles there was statistically no significant difference between ETFs and index fund performances. Out of the 230 paired matches of all the styles, ETFs outperformed index mutual funds 134 times in terms of Sharpe Ratio; however, the test of the hypothesis showed no statistically significant difference between ETFs and index fund performances in terms of Sharpe Ratio. The break-down of the results for risk-adjusted buy and hold total returns was slightly different from those for the Sharpe Ratio, though the overall conclusion was the same. For five of the styles, index funds outperformed ETFs, for three styles ETFs outperformed index funds, and for four styles there was statistically no significant difference between the performances of the two. Out of the 230 paired matches of all the styles put together, ETFs outperformed index mutual funds 125 times in terms of risk-adjusted buy and hold total return; however, the test of hypothesis showed no statistically significant difference between ETFs and index fund performances in terms of risk-adjusted buy and hold total return. These findings indicate that there is statistically no significant difference between ETFs and passive index mutual fund performances at the fund level, and that investors’ choice between the two is related to product characteristics and tax advantages.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammad Sharifzadeh & Simin Hojat, 2012. "An analytical performance comparison of exchange-traded funds with index funds: 2002–2010," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 13(3), pages 196-209, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:assmgt:v:13:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1057_jam.2012.3
    DOI: 10.1057/jam.2012.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/jam.2012.3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/jam.2012.3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jack W Aber & Dan Li & Luc Can, 2009. "Price volatility and tracking ability of ETFs," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(4), pages 210-221, October.
    2. Jobson, J D & Korkie, Bob M, 1981. "Performance Hypothesis Testing with the Sharpe and Treynor Measures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(4), pages 889-908, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wu, Chunying & Xiong, Xiong & Gao, Ya, 2021. "Performance comparisons between ETFs and traditional index funds: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    2. Damien Kunjal & Faeezah Peerbhai & Paul-Francois Muzindutsi, 2021. "The performance of South African exchange traded funds under changing market conditions," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(5), pages 350-359, September.
    3. Prabhdeep Kaur & Jaspal Singh & Sidharath Seth, 2021. "Investigating the Dynamics of Exchange Traded Funds Across the Bear and Bull Markets: Evidence from Indian Equity ETFs," Vision, , vol. 25(3), pages 350-360, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mohammad Sharifzadeh & Simin Hojat, 2011. "An analytical performance comparison of exchanged traded funds with index funds: 2002-2010," Papers 1111.0389, arXiv.org.
    2. Candelon, B. & Hurlin, C. & Tokpavi, S., 2012. "Sampling error and double shrinkage estimation of minimum variance portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 511-527.
    3. Jeroen Derwall & Kees Koedijk, 2009. "Socially Responsible Fixed‐Income Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1‐2), pages 210-229, January.
    4. Jacobs, Heiko & Müller, Sebastian & Weber, Martin, 2014. "How should individual investors diversify? An empirical evaluation of alternative asset allocation policies," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 62-85.
    5. Sepideh Dolatabadi & Paresh Kumar Narayan & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Ke Xu, 2018. "Economic significance of commodity return forecasts from the fractionally cointegrated VAR model," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 219-242, February.
    6. Didik Susilo & Sugeng Wahyudi & Irene Rini Demi Pangestuti, 2020. "Factors Affecting the Indonesia Stock Exchange: A Multi-Index Approach," International Journal of Financial Research, International Journal of Financial Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 11(2), pages 196-204, April.
    7. Getmansky, Mila & Lo, Andrew W. & Makarov, Igor, 2004. "An econometric model of serial correlation and illiquidity in hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 529-609, December.
    8. Mariusz Czekala & Zbigniew Kurylek, 2021. "Inversions Distribution and Testing Correlation Changes for Rates of Return," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3B), pages 633-650.
    9. Cederburg, Scott & O’Doherty, Michael S. & Wang, Feifei & Yan, Xuemin (Sterling), 2020. "On the performance of volatility-managed portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 95-117.
    10. Sascha Raithel & Manfred Schwaiger, 2015. "The effects of corporate reputation perceptions of the general public on shareholder value," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(6), pages 945-956, June.
    11. Sebastian Lobe & Christian Walkshäusl, 2016. "Vice versus virtue investing around the world," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 303-344, March.
    12. Qunzi Zhang, 2021. "One hundred years of rare disaster concerns and commodity prices," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(12), pages 1891-1915, December.
    13. Harper, Joel T. & Madura, Jeff & Schnusenberg, Oliver, 2006. "Performance comparison between exchange-traded funds and closed-end country funds," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 104-122, April.
    14. Annaert, Jan & De Ceuster, Marc J. K. & Van Hyfte, Wim, 2005. "The value of asset allocation advice: Evidence from The Economist's quarterly portfolio poll," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 661-680, March.
    15. Patrick Bielstein, 2018. "International asset allocation using the market implied cost of capital," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 32(1), pages 17-51, February.
    16. Stewart, Shamar L. & Massa, Olga Isengildina & Hassman, Colburn & Leon, Maximo de, 2023. "ETP tracking of U.S. agricultural and energy markets," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    17. Gabriel Frahm, 2018. "An Intersection–Union Test for the Sharpe Ratio," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-13, April.
    18. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George, 2011. "Should investors include commodities in their portfolios after all? New evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2606-2626, October.
    19. Zhou, Jian & Nicholson, Joseph R., 2015. "Economic value of modeling covariance asymmetry for mixed-asset portfolio diversifications," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 14-21.
    20. Jondeau, Eric & Zhang, Qunzi & Zhu, Xiaoneng, 2019. "Average skewness matters," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 29-47.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:assmgt:v:13:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1057_jam.2012.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.