Dimensional Global Credit ETF’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Bronze. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's effective investment philosophy supports an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant overweight position in corporate bonds and A rated bonds compared with category peers. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm a High Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

Morningstar's evaluation of this fund's process seeks to understand management's investment philosophy, and whether it has been applied consistently over time and can add value across the market cycle. Dimensional Global Credit ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating.    The largest contributor to the rating is the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 71%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and beat their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. The firm's five-year retention rate of 85% also supports the process. Lastly, the process is limited by being an actively managed strategy. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that actively managed funds have generally underperformed their passive counterparts, especially over longer time horizons.

 Compared with other funds in the Global Bond-USD Hedged Morningstar Category, this fund, historically, hews closely to peers' credit and interest-rate sensitivity over the past few years. Opening the analysis to additional factors, the portfolio has displayed biases over time, whether towards or away from certain fixed-income instruments. Relative to the average strategy in the category, the managers have been meaningfully overweight corporate bonds in recent years. In the latest month, the strategy has relatively overweighted corporate bonds compared with its peers as well. Additionally, there's been a notable overallocation to A rated bonds over the past few years. Compared with category peers, the strategy had more exposure to A rated bonds in the most recent month. Finally, during the past few years, the fund leaned meaningfully towards debt with 10- to 15-year maturities. In this month, the strategy also leaned more towards debt with 10- to 15-year maturities compared with its peers.

  The portfolio holds assets with a higher average surveyed credit quality of A, compared with the category average of BBB, and it holds no non-investment-grade assets, despite the average peers' 8%. Lower-credit-risk strategies are often able to navigate bear markets more effectively.

Above Average

Process

Dimensional Global Credit ETF earns an Average People Pillar rating. The team is backed by David A. Plecha, the longest-tenured manager on the strategy, who brings over 25 years of listed portfolio management experience. The average Morningstar Rating of the strategies they currently manage is 2.8 stars, reflecting below-average risk-adjusted performance relative to category peers. David A. Plecha has an experienced backdrop of support. The three listed managers boast 20 years of average listed portfolio management experience. As a team, they manage nine investment vehicles together, with an asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral. This means, in aggregate, the team falls short and will struggle to produce positive alpha. None of the managers here invest any money in the strategy, which is disappointing, as such investments help align managers' interests with fundholders.

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

Average

People

Dimensional’s mutual fund business has faced some tough challenges over the past few years. Despite large and persistent outflows, the firm has remained steadfast in its philosophy and responded in a way that benefits clients while improving its competitiveness. Dimensional maintains its High Parent Pillar rating.

More than $80 billion left Dimensional’s mutual funds between 2020 and 2022, but its response to the turmoil has been admirable. The firm started reducing fees in early 2020, and it continued the effort with three additional rounds of cuts.

Dimensional’s endeavor into exchange-traded funds was the biggest step it took to shore up its business. The firm converted seven tax-managed mutual funds to ETFs between mid-2021 and mid-2022. Along the way, it launched an additional two dozen that largely follow the same strategies underpinning the existing mutual funds. The firm also reinvested in its separate accounts platform by bolstering the technology used to manage these portfolios. The effort was aimed at improving operational efficiencies.

These measures appear to be paying off. The firm’s new ETFs have proved popular among its clients. In 2022, they brought in enough new money to nearly offset the outflows from its mutual funds. The separate account platform’s operational improvements, along with the new ETF lineup’s tax efficiency, should benefit clients and strengthen the firm’s prospects.

High

Parent

Dimensional Global Credit ETF

DGCB is actively managed, investing in a broad portfolio of debt securities of any credit quality that are maturing within 20 years. The fund aims to maximize total returns, while optimizing overall gains.

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