The tracker fund price war must end some day. After all you can’t charge less than zero for running a fund…

…or can you?

Perhaps the ultimate move by the giants such as Vanguard, Blackrock, and Fidelity is to pay us for the privilege of running our passive investments?

Maybe they’ll try to make it back by snaggling a chunk of the customers they seduce into expensive active options, and so trackers will be loss leaders like current accounts for High Street banks?

Well, whatever the long term strategy, the tracker fund fee bonfire has been great for UK investors.

When it comes to the major markets, our days of being the poorer investing relations of our bargain-boasting US cousins are rapidly coming to a close.

Blackrock’s rock bottom funds

Latest to slash the bill is Blackrock, which has just cut the charges on five of its big tracker funds by around 50% on average – effective 11 August.

Here are the five Blackrock tracker funds in question:

Fund	Current OCF 1	New OCF	Fund size
BlackRock UK Equity Tracker Fund	0.16%	0.07%	£8,129m
BlackRock Continental European Equity Tracker Fund	0.17%	0.10%	£2,984m
BlackRock North American Equity Tracker Fund	0.16%	0.08%	£2,874m
BlackRock US Equity Tracker Fund	0.16%	0.08%	£800m
BlackRock 100 UK Equity Tracker Fund	0.16%	0.07%	£649m

Source: Blackrock/Hargreaves Lansdown

As Monevator reader Bruce points out, that makes Blackrock cheaper to own than Vanguard’s previously table-topping UK tracker fund – and there’s no initial charge on the Blackrock product either.

The other four fund fees also look very competitive. But for now charges remain unchanged on the 12 other funds in Blackrock’s passive range.

Still, let’s not gripe. There is around £15bn of index funds represented in that table, and the tithe levied on it is about to get cut in half.

That should mean millions of pounds more in ordinary passive investor’s pockets.

It also means we’ll need to update our guide to the cheapest tracker funds. I’ll wait for the word from my co-blogger The Accumulator on that.

Where next for lower fees?

Adam Laird, head of passive investments at Hargreaves Lansdown sees the battle lines shifting elsewhere now prices have come down so far on the core products.

“There is still further ground to be gained in the passive price war, though the arms race in UK and US equities means that battles are likely to rage on new fronts, such as in corporate bonds and emerging markets,” Laird says.

“There are also some passive providers who are simply sitting in their bunkers and hoping no-one notices they are charging way above the going rate for their funds.”

See our guide to calculating the cost of switching to work out if it’s worth you emerging from your own passive slumber for a bit of judicious fund swapping.

1. Class D[↩]

Good reads from around the Web.

I laughed out loud reading The Escape Artist’s FAQ for City workers who are thinking about attending a summer festival.

Here’s an extract:

Can I catch communism at a festival?

No. Communism is not a communicable disease. Communism is in fact a sub-optimal system for organising the allocation of scarce resources favoured by The Soviet Union and China prior to the 1990s. Unfortunately for the millions of working class people that died as a result.

Festivals are excellent examples of capitalism at work. Like companies, festivals work best when they treat people as humans, are lightly regulated, flexible and run by good people who don’t get too greedy.

Yes, there are plenty of stalls selling…ahem…non-essential items such as healing crystals, whale song CDs and vegetarian sandals…but these are small entrepreneurs providing what people want.

The irony is that many bankers think festivals are full of communists. Yet it is the bankers that work in monolithic faceless bureaucracies supported by The State.

Most banks make decisions with the efficiency of a 1930s Soviet tractor factory.

Many Monevator readers are City workers. A few of you might be offended, but to be honest I suspect you’ll find it funniest of all.

(Besides, he is talking about the other people…)

[continue reading…]

Some assets are riskier than others, both in terms of the security of the income they generate and the potential for capital losses and gains.

This relationship between risk and return is one of the cornerstones of investing.

Generally, the greater the risks of holding a particular asset, the greater the potential return for the investor.

Cash is the safest asset since by definition its nominal value is guaranteed. If placed in a savings account, cash generates an income that varies with interest rates. But its value ¹ does not change.

Government bonds such as U.S. Treasuries and UK Gilts pay a fixed income to the holder. They are also redeemed at par value on a given maturity date, which means that when you buy a government bond you can know exactly what return you’ll achieve – provided you hold it to maturity.

This combination of a fixed coupon and a known repayment date and sum makes US and UK government bonds very safe investments. ²

This does not mean you can’t lose money through trading government bonds.

As the interest rate on cash rises and falls, the relative attractiveness of the fixed income from a government bond changes. This increases or decreases the bonds’ value to investors. Accordingly, the amount an investor will pay for the income stream from a bond (i.e. its price) will fluctuate, altering the yield it offers new buyers – even though the absolute cash paid out by the bond remains the same.

Government bonds are guaranteed by the government, which is another attractive feature. Investors in stable countries such as the US and the UK can be confident they will get back the par/face value of their government’s bond if they hold it to maturity.

For these reasons government bonds are often termed ‘risk-free assets’ (although in extreme situations no investment is totally safe).

Corporate bonds similarly provide a known income, a redemption date, and fluctuate in value along the way – but they do without the security of a government guarantee. This means they are riskier, and so should always yield more than government bonds.

Other assets such as shares and commercial property are riskier still.

• Companies pay dividends. But the amount paid is not guaranteed.

• An office building will generate a rental income, but this can be reduced by vacancies.

Both shares and property as a class tend to increase in value over the long-term, but they can fall in price in the short to medium-term and individually become worthless – a company can go bust or a house fall down.

Even if the worst does not happen, there is no redemption date or price with shares or commercial property when you can trade in your holdings for a known sum as you can with bonds, which further increases the risks of owning such assets.

More, more, more

The good news is that this greater risk opens up the potential for higher returns.

That’s because investors in riskier assets demand greater returns for holding such assets – otherwise they would sell up and put their money into less risky assets.

For instance, if you can get 3% on cash savings, you are unlikely to buy riskier corporate bonds also yielding 3%, unless you think interest rates on cash are going to fall fast.

With cash, your money is safe. Corporate bonds can drop in value and default on payments. Therefore you’d only buy bonds if you expected a higher return compared to cash.

This principle extends along a curve that roughly tracks high risks for higher potential returns.

With shares, there’s no fixed income, no redemption price/date, and no government guarantee backstopping your investment.

No surprise then that shares also offer the highest potential returns.

Capital risk/return

Gains on holding an asset don’t have to come by way of income. This further complicates the risk/return picture.

A particular share’s dividend yield will often be far lower than the income paid by a government bond or cash, for instance, even though holding the share is clearly far more risky.

But this does not necessarily violate the risk/return principle.

Rather, the owner of the share expects to be compensated for the extra risk by capital appreciation – that is, by the share price rising.

They’ll usually expect the regular cash dividend paid by the company to increase over time, too, in contrast to the static payment from a bond.

Balancing risk and reward

Investors must try to choose the mix of assets that provides the best return for the level of risk that they are prepared to take.

Diversifying a portfolio between several different asset classes can enhance expected returns while reducing the overall risk being taken by the investor, since some assets may rise in price as others decline.

Other factors such as the time value of money must also be considered when evaluating risk.

See more financial terms in the Monevator glossary.

1. Ignoring inflation[↩]
2. Note: Before anyone starts ranting in the comments, safe does not mean “high return”.[↩]