Cinthia Murphy, Managing Editor, ETF.com
The U.S. stock market is making new highs, and just about everything seems to be working well for investors this year. But there are still some ETFs struggling to find their footing in 2019.
The list of worst-performing ETFs of the year isn’t all that long, as only about a tenth of the ETFs that were around at the end of last year are down on a year-to-date basis. This has been, overall, a good year for all sorts of ETFs.
Still, peppering the tally of bottom performers year to date is a number of leveraged, inverse and/or VIX products. That’s often the case in times when the market is doing well—aggressive bets in volatile parts of the market, or against the market, don’t necessarily pay off.
A strategy such as the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX) is down a whopping 77% year to date—massive losses considering the S&P 500 is up about 20%. TVIX offers 2x exposure to VIX futures in an effort to capture near-term volatility in the S&P 500.
If you exclude leveraged, inverse and VIX-related strategies from the tally, the list of bottom performers year to date is very diverse, led by the Global X MSCI Pakistan ETF (PAK), which has dropped 16.5% in 2019. PAK is pressured by weak economic growth in Pakistan, and expectations of austerity measures by the government there going forward.
Other emerging market ETFs such as the VanEck Vectors India Small-Cap Index ETF (SCIF) and the Global X MSCI Nigeria ETF (NGE) are also lagging in a year when broad emerging market strategies have tallied only modest returns.
Natural gas ETFs and other commodity strategies, as well as some trend-following funds, have also landed among the worst-performing ETFs of the year. The complete list of bottom performers is below:
On the flip side, the list of best-performing ETFs of the year include funds such as the Invesco Solar ETF (TAN), the Invesco DWA Tech Momentum ETF (PTF) and the Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO), up anywhere from 35% to 52% in 2019.
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