No. of Recommendations: 6
great find...except the fee.
is there any van\fido\etc cheaper equivalent?
Lord knows I've looked. In short, no, there is no alternative equivalent fund anywhere in the world. I've even looked at finding an authorized participant for the ETF to exchange a block for the underlying securities. The problem here (other than probably requiring $2 million) is that several of the underlying securities are not allowed to be held by individuals, some countries restrict them.
The 50 bps fee isn't really that bad in my view. It's a small fund, and a lot of the underlying securities are HARD (if not impossible) to buy yourself. They're earning it.
The bigger problem for me is that all the underlying securities, being government issued, are inherently tax free at source. But because the fund "wrapper" itself is in the US, all coupons get a 30% non-recoverable US withholding tax haircut before they get to me. This isn't a problem for people in other jurisdictions, but it's a big difference for me, knocking off around 1.8%/year compared to buying the same underlying securities. Plus another 0.5% for the fees, of course.
Jim
