Hi toofuzzy,
VEA is europe/pacific(MSCI EAFE) while VGK(MSCI Europe) is europe only. I could not find the VEA yield on the vanguard website.
At this moment i see two problems with ETFS:
1- synthetic ETFS(use of futures). AVOID THEM.
In 2008 I remember that commodity ETFs which were dependent on AIG did not trade for a week or so, until Paulson did his thing.
At this moment I would avoid any synthetic ETFs, like DBC. Also in France and Germany there are quit a number of synthetic ETFs at the moment that will get into problems when the banks blow up(after a Greece event or an Italian event)
This weekend there was a warning here by the Society of Equity Investors to get out of these ETFs!
2- Lending failures.
I know of 2 lending failures now:
There was the case of a DBX Europe tracker that suddenly was invested in Japan smallcap.
The other is the AMUNDI(Credit Agricole/Socgen) MSCI Netherlands ETF, which contains 95% Swedish equities. I can assure you that Sweden is not part of the Netherlands!
These are the things I know from my own experience. There will be more issues that we do not know yet. Vanguard is the only company that will return the lending profits to the ETF. Other companies will take 50% of those profits. The investors have the risk, the ETF supplier the profit.
What to do? :
1- I will always take a Vanguard ETF when I have the choice.
2- Look for opportunities elsewhere(CEF for example)
3- Maybe forget about ETFs and create a Graham like portfolio of stocks. (I discovered this holiday that Graham was kind of an AIMer before Lichello published his book)
Best Regards,K
