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Summary XBI is an almost pure play on the biotechnology sector. For investors that want to rely on modern portfolio theory rather than assessing biotechnology companies, this is a solid option. The ETF has shown stronger correlations with international equity than domestic equity which suggests investors may want to limit international exposure when going heavy XBI. The negative correlation for XBI with long term treasury bonds is only mediocre. Compared to the S&P 500, it is more difficult to diversify away the portfolio risk through treasuries. Investors should be seeking to improve their risk adjusted returns. I’m a big fan of using ETFs to achieve the risk adjusted returns relative to the portfolios that a normal investor can generate for themselves after trading costs. The biotechnology sector has been hot and despite being high risk it can be a very profitable area to invest. The challenge is that investors either need specialized knowledge to pick the companies they will hold or a simple strategy for buying into an ETF in the sector. As you might guess, I prefer the second method. My strengths are in analyzing ETFs and mREITs. I’d rather not be forced to figure out which biotechnology companies are most likely to patent the next breakthrough. That makes using an ETF a great way to get exposure. One of the biggest options for that exposure is the SPDR Biotech ETF (NYSEARCA: XBI ). Expense Ratio The expense ratio on XBI is .35%. Sector XBI is not confused about their role. The portfolio is very close to a pure play on the biotechnology sector. Largest Holdings The largest holdings are shown in the chart below: While I usually recognize all the companies within an ETF, this isn’t one of those cases. I know precisely zero of these companies, but I do appreciate that the fund has been designed to be relatively equal weight. For comparison, I also grabbed a chart of the holdings for the index. Index Holdings You may notice that the order of holdings is very materially different. XBI is not just passively tracking the index. Investors might think that means their returns would be very different from the index, but it turns out they actually track the index quite closely. Comparison The following chart shows the performance numbers for several time periods: (click to enlarge) Some investors may have a much easier time visualizing the returns with graphs, so I grabbed a bar chart as well: (click to enlarge) I think the bar chart really drives this home. Even though XBI is using a very different portfolio structure than their index, they have extremely similar returns over each time period. When I check an ETF against their index, I usually expect them to slightly underperform because of the expensive ratio. They have trailed their index, but only by around .05% on an annualized basis which is very good when you consider that the expense ratio is .35%. If they can continue to deliver that performance over the next decade it will be a testament to the management doing a solid job of deciding which companies deserve to be overweight in the portfolio. Building the Portfolio The sample portfolio I ran for this assessment is one that came out feeling a bit awkward. I’ve had some requests to include biotechnology ETFs and I decided it would be wise to also include a the related field of health care for a comparison. Since I wanted to create quite a bit of diversification, I put in 9 ETFs plus the S&P 500. The resulting portfolio is one that I think turned out to be too risky for most investors and certainly too risky for older investors. Despite that weakness, I opted to go with highlighting these ETFs in this manner because I think it is useful to show investors what it looks like when the allocations result in a suboptimal allocation. The weightings for each ETF in the portfolio are a simple 10% which results in 20% of the portfolio going to the combined Health Care and Biotechnology sectors. Outside of that we have one spot each for REITs, high yield bonds, TIPS, emerging market consumer staples, domestic consumer staples, foreign large capitalization firms, and long term bonds. The first thing I want to point out about these allocations are that for any older investor, running only 30% in bonds with 10% of that being high yield bonds is putting yourself in a fairly dangerous position. I will be highlighting the individual ETFs, but I would not endorse this portfolio as a whole. The portfolio assumes frequent rebalancing which would be a problem for short term trading outside of tax advantaged accounts unless the investor was going to rebalance by adding to their positions on a regular basis and allocating the majority of the capital towards whichever portions of the portfolio had been underperforming recently. Because a substantial portion of the yield from this portfolio comes from REITs and interest, I would favor this portfolio as a tax exempt strategy even if the investor was frequently rebalancing by adding new capital. The portfolio allocations can be seen below along with the dividend yields from each investment. Name Ticker Portfolio Weight Yield SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF SPY 10.00% 2.11% Health Care Select Sect SPDR ETF XLV 10.00% 1.40% SPDR Biotech ETF XBI 10.00% 1.54% iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF IYR 10.00% 3.83% PowerShares Fundamental High Yield Corporate Bond Portfolio ETF PHB 10.00% 4.51% FlexShares iBoxx 3-Year Target Duration TIPS Index ETF TDTT 10.00% 0.16% EGShares Emerging Markets Consumer ETF ECON 10.00% 1.34% Fidelity MSCI Consumer Staples Index ETF FSTA 10.00% 2.99% iShares MSCI EAFE ETF EFA 10.00% 2.89% Vanguard Long-Term Bond ETF BLV 10.00% 4.02% Portfolio 100.00% 2.48% The next chart shows the annualized volatility and beta of the portfolio since October of 2013. (click to enlarge) Risk Contribution The risk contribution category demonstrates the amount of the portfolio’s volatility that can be attributed to that position. You can see immediately since this is a simple “equal weight” portfolio that XBI is by far the most risky ETF from the perspective of what it does to the portfolio’s volatility. You can also see that BLV has a negative total risk impact on the portfolio. When you see negative risk contributions in this kind of assessment it generally means that there will be significantly negative correlations with other asset classes in the portfolio. The position in TDTT is also unique for having a risk contribution of almost nothing. Unfortunately, it also provides a weak yield and weak return with little opportunity for that to change unless yields on TIPS improve substantially. If that happened, it would create a significant loss before the position would start generating meaningful levels of income. A quick rundown of the portfolio I put together the following chart that really simplifies the role of each investment: Name Ticker Role in Portfolio SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF SPY Core of Portfolio Health Care Select Sect SPDR ETF XLV Hedge Risk of Higher Costs SPDR Biotech ETF XBI Increase Expected Return iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF IYR Diversify Domestic Risk PowerShares Fundamental High Yield Corporate Bond Portfolio ETF PHB Strong Yields on Bond Investments FlexShares iBoxx 3-Year Target Duration TIPS Index ETF TDTT Very Low Volatility EGShares Emerging Markets Consumer ETF ECON Enhance Foreign Exposure Fidelity MSCI Consumer Staples Index ETF FSTA Reduce Portfolio Risk iShares MSCI EAFE ETF EFA Enhance Foreign Exposure Vanguard Long-Term Bond ETF BLV Negative Correlation, Strong Yield Correlation The chart below shows the correlation of each ETF with each other ETF in the portfolio. Blue boxes indicate positive correlations and tan box indicate negative correlations. Generally speaking lower levels of correlation are highly desirable and high levels of correlation substantially reduce the benefits from diversification. (click to enlarge) Conclusion XBI is an extremely aggressive allocation that easily brings in the heaviest level of risk in the portfolio. Despite being a major source of risk, the correlation with the S&P 500 is only .56% and the resulting beta is “only” 1.44 which is very good when you consider how volatile the ETF has been. The thing that may be even more interesting is what happens when investors run the regression over a longer period. When I extended the sample period back to February of 2006, the correlation goes up to .68 but the beta drops down to .91 because the ETF was dramatically less volatile in the earlier years. Lately the sector has been substantially more volatile. The strong performance of XBI also extends back quite a ways. Since February 2006 the ETF has returned over 400%. I also extended this sample by running another regression of returns on XBI against a long term government bond index. The negative correlation in that case came in at -.35 compared to the S&P 500 coming in at -.54. The risk that comes from the weaker negative correlation is that it makes it more difficult to really drive portfolio risk lower. However, for an investor that is willing to hold a portfolio that is already overweight on equities, it would seem perfectly reasonable to include XBI as an allocation. It is a highly aggressive allocation, but it has done very well. The one other interesting note that I would make in that regard is that it has shown a substantially higher correlation with international ETFs than with domestic equity. If you’re planning to run XBI as a large holding, you may want to consider reducing the international equity allocation. Scalper1 News
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