With a little over a week left in 2021 and 5 trading days left as of today I thought I would get out ahead of the flood of year end summary posts. Last year I broke down the top performing ETFs as well as flow trends so I guess this makes it tradition now? As this is year 2 I'm also going to compare the list this year with the list last year to give you some context on how much things change. While the top performers list is helpful for context on what has been happening this year I absolutely do not suggest using it as a shopping list for the future. The top performing fund one year only has a 20% chance of repeating the next year and less than a 10% chance of making it 3 years in a row. With that being said let's look at the top 10 performing non leveraged and top 5 performing leveraged ETFs.
⭐Non Leveraged (Performance Current as of 12/22/2021)⭐
Symbol. YTD %
1) $BDRY 246.10%
2) $GRN 132.82%
3) $JJT 120.89%
4) $FCG 95.41%
5) $KRBN 94.19%
6) $PXE 92.56%
7) $URNM 92.12%
8) $REMX 86.68%
9) $PXI 74.70%
10) $IEO 71.14%
⭐ Top 5 Leveraged ETFs/ETNs ⭐
Symbol. YTD %
1) $NRGU 144.01%
2) $GUSH 138.28%
3) $RETL 124.54%
4) $HIBL 113.36%
5) $BNKU 110.61%
Here are the top 5 ETFs from 2020 and their 2021 performance
2020 2021
$ARKG. 185.32%. -30.72%
$TAN. 179.35%. -24.28%
$PBW. 162.00%. -30.56%
$ARKW. 150.77%. -15.37%
$QCLN, 149.12%. -5.18%
Pretty eye opening. So what were the trends this year and what are ETF inflows indicating about the future?
⭐Trends⭐
If you look at the top 25 performing ETFs for 2021 both leveraged and non leveraged the first thing you'll be struck by is how much it's dominated by the energy sector. The second will be just how much of a gap exists between the top performer and the runner up. For illustration let's say you had $10k to invest in Jan 1 2021. If you had put all $10k into $BDRY you'd have $31,015 today vs $12,852 if you'd invested in the S&P index and $25,528 if you'd invested in the #2 top fund $NRGU a difference of $5,487. Let's check on the major indexes performance for the year. First the broad look and then a look by market cap/investing style.
📈Dow Jones Industrial $DIA 16.87%
📈S&P 500 $SPY 25.09%
📈NASDAQ $QQQ 25.57%
📈Russell 2000 $IWM 12.35%
📉Gold $IAU -5.32%
📉10-Year Treasury $IEF -3.66%
Mega Cap
Growth $MGK 26.93%
Value $MGV 21.58%
Large Cap
Growth $IVW 29.72%
Value $IVE 19.93%
Mid Cap
Growth $IJK 15.51%
Value $IJJ 24.97%
Small Cap
Growth $IJT 19.15%
Value $IJS 26.72%
Russell 2000
Growth $IWO 1.60%
Value $IWN 24.30%
I'm most struck by that last one. I actually had to double check that it was correct and it is. Value and growth trading the lead when the S&P index is used with growth leading in larger market cap likely due to the FAANGM factor. At smaller market cap value has a commanding lead. When the index is swapped to the Russell 2000, which excludes the top 1000 stocks by market cap, Value just wiping the floor with growth.
Finally let's look at the money flows for 2021. Investors piled a record $900 billion into ETFs this year — nearly double what they invested in all of 2020. Massive flows into ETFs reveal where investors think the most money is to be made. They're looking for low-cost ways to stay in the broad market as it continues its multiyear march higher. But they're also looking to play it safe a bit, too, by scooping up some of the assets that haven't rallied as much.
The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF $VTI hauled in $43 billion in assets this year, more than any other ETF. The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF even took in 30% more money this year than the world's largest ETF: SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust $SPY The SPDR S&P 500 ETF holds $448 billion in assets. But it's focused on just 500 U.S. large cap companies, which has ruled markets for years.
Looking to scoop up big-caps left out of the growth-focused rally of years past, investors poured more than $14 billion into the Vanguard Value ETF $VTV . It's largely populated with financials, health care and energy plays that have gotten trampled by big-cap technology for years. The ETF's top holding is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B at nearly 3% of the portfolio. Financials are the top holding at more than 20% of the portfolio.
Investors, too, are looking to turn a profit on areas of the market left out of the year's rally. More than $13 billion flowed into the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF $IEFA The ETF owns companies in developed nations outside the U.S., which rose less than 10% this year. Additionally, $10.4 billion moved into the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF $VWO which fell 3% this year.
But they're not turning their backs on big-cap technology. The tech heavy Invesco QQQ Trust $QQQ which owns the 100 largest stocks on the Nasdaq like Apple $AAPL , pulled in nearly $16 billion.
The Top 5 by Inflows
Symbol Inflows. YTD %
1) $VTI $43.1B 21.6%
2) $VOO $42.2B 23.9%
3) $SPY $33.0B 23.8%
4) $IVV $26.1B 23.9%
5) $BND $18.0B. -3.5%
So I hope this provides you with some perspective on this year because if not that was a lot of work for nothing! I tried to cover as much as possible but if there's some information you'd like to see that I omitted please let me know. Might be interesting to save this post and look back at it next year to see which, if any, trends continued. Have a Merry Christmas and a great rest of 2021!
# # # # # # #invest #longterm #tcardizzle #trends
/////
As members of the discord can testify, we've talked about 2/3 of the top 10 months before they were on anyone's radar. Want to get ahead of the trend? Join us
https://discord.gg/emntYaQkDu
Dec 23, 2020 - Dec 23, 2021BDRY249.72%GRN145.66%JJT122.19%FCG99.26%
BDRY
GRN
JJT
FCG
3
0
