Leveraged and inverse ETF performance during the financial crisis

Purpose - Leveraged and inverse ETFs (hereafter leveraged ETFs) have received much press coverage of late due to issues with their performance. Managers and the media have focused investors' attention on the impact of compounding, when the funds are held for more than one day. The aim of this paper is to lay out a framework for assessing the performance of leveraged ETFs. Design/methodology/approach - The authors propose a simple way to disentangle the effect of compounding and that of the management of the fund and the trading premiums/discounts, all of which affect investors' bottom line. The former is influenced by the effectiveness and the costs of the manager's (synthetic) replication strategy and the use of leverage. The latter reflects liquidity and the efficiency of the market. Findings - The paper finds that tracking errors were not caused by the effects of compounding alone. Depending on the fund, the impact of management factors can outweigh the impact of compounding, and substantial premiums/discounts caused by reduced liquidity during the financial crisis further distorted performance. Originality/value - The authors propose a framework for practitioners to evaluate the performance of leveraged ETFs. This framework highlights a very topical issue, that of the impact of synthetic replication, which all leveraged ETFs use. Financial regulators such as the SEC and the Financial Stability Board have all taken issue with synthetically replicated ETFs. In leveraged ETFs, this issue is masked by the effects of compounding. The framework the authors propose allows investors to disentangle the two effects.