What are the Vanguard VAP and BetaShares A200 ETFs designed to do?
The Vanguard VAP ETF provides investors with low-cost exposure to listed Australian property companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs).
The Betashares A200 ETF provides exposure to the largest 200 Australian companies, based on market capitalisation. Unlike many other Australian shares ETFs, A200 uses the Solactive Australia 200 Index. This is virtually the same thing as the indices provided by S&P/ASX, as it also uses a market capitalisation weighting.
For more information on the VAP ETF, see our ASX VAP review.
ASX: VAP versus ASX: A200 price performance
We’ll keep it easy and just study the fees. Based on our data for December 2021, the VAP ETF has a management expense ratio (MER) of 0.23% while the A200 ETF’s yearly fee was 0.07%. Therefore, A200 wins on this one. That said, a more useful metric to know is the fee quartiles that these ETFs find themselves in (note: quartile 1 is best). For example, any ETF which has a fee below 0.3% would be considered in our first (best) quartile.
How do they perform?
Performance matters. Keep in mind, performance isn’t everything — and past performance is not indicative of future performance. It’s just one part of a much bigger picture. The reason we say performance is not everything is because of volatility of financial markets and the economy from one year to the next. Some ETFs and funds can put in a solid return one year just to generate lacking returns the next time around. That’s why we prefer three-year or seven-year track records over one-year track records. It can smooth out the temporary performances caused by external factors. Both ETFs have achieved our three-year performance hurdle. As of December 2021, the VAP ETF had an average annual return of 13.02%. During the same time, the A200 ETF returned 14.80%.
Okay, one final thing. Let’s talk about the company responsible for the ETF. There are too many factors that go into our internal scoring of fund providers to step through in this article. The provider behind the VAP ETF is Vanguard. Vanguard ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We consider Vanguard to be in Australia’s top three ETF providers for retail investors, advisers and institutions. Meanwhile, A200’s provider is BetaShares. Betashares ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We believe BetaShares is one of the leading providers of index and non-index style products to retail investors in Australia.
Our takeaway
Did you know we have free reports? View our ASX VAP review and ASX A200 review today.
In summary, the VAP ETF rates higher for our internal scoring methodology but not by much compared to A200.
Please, keep in mind, there is much more to selecting a good ETF. That’s why you should now use these skills to find the best ETF you can. If you want the name of our team’s top ETF pick for 2022, keep reading…
