Since the start of 2013, investors have poured nearly $9 billion into high-yield exchange traded funds. Gershon Distenfeld, director of high yield at AllianceBernstein, said it is clear that they should have opted for actively managed funds instead. ‘The numbers tell the whole story. You don’t have to give fancy arguments. These things have been around for almost a decade and they have well underperformed the average active manager,’ said Distenfeld. According to Distenfeld’s numbers, since the start of 2008, shortly after their inception, the two largest ETFs— HYG and JNK—delivered annualized returns of 6.2% and 6%, respectively, well short of the 8.3% annualized return for the Barclays US Corporate High-Yield Index. He adds that the top 20% of active high-yield mangers, as rated by Lipper, have also comfortably outperformed these two ETFs and have done it with lower volatility, as measured by risk-adjusted returns, and are not really much cheaper than active funds. ‘The management fees are slightly lower. They are not the few basis points you find in the equity world. They are 40 and 50 basis point fees, but again, the numbers tell the whole story. Over eight years they have underperformed a high yield index by about 200 basis points and some of the top-tier managers by 300 or 400 basis points.’
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