What do they do?
The VanEck MVW ETF provides exposure to over 60 of the largest and most liquid Australian shares, equally weighted. By equally weighting shares, this ETF aims to reduce concentration risk in specific Australian stocks and sectors.
The SPDR SYI ETF invests in a diversified portfolio of high-yielding ‘blue chip’ Australian companies – excluding real estate investment trusts (REITs). This ETF tracks the MSCI Australia Select High Dividend Yield Index.
To learn more about the MVW ETF, read our free ETF investment report once you’re done with this article.
ASX: MVW or ASX: SYI price performance
To make this article easier to digest, we’ll just study the fees or ‘management expense ratio’ (MER). Using data for December 2021, the MVW ETF has an MER of 0.35% while the SYI ETF had a yearly fee of 0.35%. As a result, MVW comes out on top. Keep in mind, a more insightful metric to know is the fee quartiles that these ETFs find themselves in (note: quartile 1 is best). Meaning, we take all the Australian shares ETFs in our database and put them into 4 quartiles, based on their fees. For example, any ETF which has a fee below 0.3% would be considered in our first (best) quartile.
Track record
Let’s look at the past results. 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 strong return one year just to generate weak 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 MVW ETF had an average annual return of 14.20%. During the same time, the SYI ETF returned 13.08%.
Lastly, we need to consider the issuer or provider of the ETF. There are too many factors that go into our internal scoring of fund providers to detail here (you’d get bored pretty quickly). So here’s the quick version. As you guessed, the issuer of the SYI ETF is SPDR. SPDR ranks highly for our scores of ETF providers and issuers in Australia. We think SPDR is one of Australia’s top 10 ETF providers for advisers and institutions, and its ETFs on the ASX provide good exposure to particular financial markets for retail investors.
Our takeaway
To keep reading about these two ETFs, be sure to visit our free MVW ETF report or SYI ETF review.
In summary, the MVW ETF rates better for our internal scoring methodology but not by much compared to SYI.
Please, keep in mind, there is much more to choosing 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…
