Has anyone been able to time ETF’s for a long period?

[See Change]

Hi all

Long term member but inactive as have been investing in property for the last 25 years .

If you read all the property experts they say it’s time in the market that’s important not timing .

Myself and a few similarly minded people over at the property chat forum have been able to effectively time the property market for a long period of time , but it’s an inherently inefficient market compared to the share market / ETF’s .

Recently retired and looking at put spare money in our SMSF into ETF’s .

Doing a whole pile of reading and all the experts seem to be saying that it’s not possible to consistently outperform the index ETF’s and it’s time in the market that’s important .

They point out that while some will outperform for a period of time , those often underperform for the next time frame and a different set will then outperform .

They will then point out that active managers tend to underperform index ETF’s .

So are there any long term ETF investors out there who have been able to consistently outperform index funds ?

Not interested in investing in shares at this stage .

Cheers

Cliff

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

It's a good question mate, I'm not an expert on ETF v Indices but someone will reply in due course.

gg

 

[divs4ever]

Hi all

Long term member but inactive as have been investing in property for the last 25 years .

If you read all the property experts they say it’s time in the market that’s important not timing .

Myself and a few similarly minded people over at the property chat forum have been able to effectively time the property market for a long period of time , but it’s an inherently inefficient market compared to the share market / ETF’s .

Recently retired and looking at put spare money in our SMSF into ETF’s .

Doing a whole pile of reading and all the experts seem to be saying that it’s not possible to consistently outperform the index ETF’s and it’s time in the market that’s important .

They point out that while some will outperform for a period of time , those often underperform for the next time frame and a different set will then outperform .

They will then point out that active managers tend to underperform index ETF’s .

So are there any long term ETF investors out there who have been able to consistently outperform index funds ?

Not interested in investing in shares at this stage .

Cheers

Cliff

welcome to posting

firstly not all ETFs are index funds ( or reverse index funds ) there are some exotic mixes in there so please research each target CAREFULLY ( those little differences can make a BIG difference in your outcome )

an index fund is designed to track to index but will under-perform slightly due to leakage of the fees ( taken out before got your dividends )

now timing

i started buying VAS March 2011 and kept adding for the rest of 2011 ( and still hold some )

so i am up 77% ( roughly ) over those 13 years which doesn't seem so flash after you calculate inflation , BUT on the way there have been dividends/distributions ( and franking credits )

now 2011 was a down year and i kept adding ( cheaper ) in the down trend

now IF the ASX was going to fall markedly ( by more than 20%) in 2025 you would have your chance at 'timing the market ' ( instead of buying at recent record highs )

oh by the way .. the wiggle word ' is 'consistently ' .. if you did buy in obvious downtrends in the market , i think you would find a better result than just buying some every month .. the market bounces around a fair bit but trends up long term partly fueled by inflation

property vs index funds , the BIG difference is , you can reduce/exit an index fund relatively quickly no waiting for contracts to settle ( well OK you should have your cash in the bank 3 days after selling your ETF and you don't have to sell it all at once , like a block of land )

now i lost patience ( and sold out of ) an index fund the focused on property stocks ( REITs ) since you understand property you might find comparing such a fund , against your experiences in property say over the last 10 years as some sort of guide

 

[See Change]

welcome to posting

firstly not all ETFs are index funds ( or reverse index funds ) there are some exotic mixes in there so please research each target CAREFULLY ( those little differences can make a BIG difference in your outcome )

an index fund is designed to track to index but will under-perform slightly due to leakage of the fees ( taken out before got your dividends )

now timing

i started buying VAS March 2011 and kept adding for the rest of 2011 ( and still hold some )

so i am up 77% ( roughly ) over those 13 years which doesn't seem so flash after you calculate inflation , BUT on the way there have been dividends/distributions ( and franking credits )

now 2011 was a down year and i kept adding ( cheaper ) in the down trend

now IF the ASX was going to fall markedly ( by more than 20%) in 2025 you would have your chance at 'timing the market ' ( instead of buying at recent record highs )

oh by the way .. the wiggle word ' is 'consistently ' .. if you did buy in obvious downtrends in the market , i think you would find a better result than just buying some every month .. the market bounces around a fair bit but trends up long term partly fueled by inflation

property vs index funds , the BIG difference is , you can reduce/exit an index fund relatively quickly no waiting for contracts to settle ( well OK you should have your cash in the bank 3 days after selling your ETF and you don't have to sell it all at once , like a block of land )

now i lost patience ( and sold out of ) an index fund the focused on property stocks ( REITs ) since you understand property you might find comparing such a fund , against your experiences in property say over the last 10 years as some sort of guide

Re VAS , do you know what your total return including distributions etc is ?

Obviously the biggest advantage of property is leverage . We’ve bought multiple properties over the years with 100 % borrowed money , outside the personal observation is it’s timeable .

Re lumpable nature of property .
Yes , but you plan for that , have buffers and we’ve never found it to be an issue .

As an exercise , I’ve never been interested in backtesting / benchmarking our performance against shares etc . We have a net worth in the 8 figures , debt level of around 3 % so it’s worked well for us .

moving forward we know we need more liquid assets hence the pivot . We will be keeping most of our IP’s though outside the two planned sales we may sell more in around 10-15 years ( during the next boom ..)

Cheers

Cliff

 

[investor13]

If you had of brought in to some etfs after the pandemic just after the world stopped you would had made bulk money. But it depends on the underlyings of the ETF