I think VWRP would be better than VWRA, as VWRA is demoninated in USD, so with that you’d get the currency charges when buying and selling. On the other hand VWRP is denominated in GBP so you wouldn’t need to pay that fee.
There have been ETFs added recently with less votes than this one (VAPX), including some which I cant even find a voting thread for (VNRT). Please add this one.
Would also like to see this, I imagine for a lot of users accumulating ETFs are going to be more useful than distributing because in smaller accounts you won’t get a payment that corresponds to a nice whole number of units.
As you noted earlier VWRP is traded in GBP and VWRA is traded in USD. Given this the bit I don’t understand is why they both have USD in their name and what the significance of this is
I hope this helps The underlying currencies : This is your currency exposure to the company shares contained in the ETF. E.g. for VWRP this would be mainly USD, but you would also be exposed to currency risk of other countries (JPY, EUR,…). This is where your currency risk comes from. Some ETFs offer a GBP hedged version that would e.g. negate the impact of a depreciation of USD vs GBP, these are often a little more expensive. The trading currency : The same fund can be listed on different exchanges in different currencies. If a UK investor buys or sells an ETF traded in USD, there would usually be an additional FX fee at the time of purchase and sale (i.e. FT’s 0.45%). If you were to buy the GBP version, nothing would have to be exchanged, so no FX fee would apply. The trading currency does not alter your exposure to foreign currencies. The fund / base currency : Refers to the currency that a fund reports in, USD in the case of VWRP. It’s usually the same as the currency of most of the securities within the ETF. The ETF reports its Net Asset Value in the fund currency and distributes income in that currency too.
Based on what you have said, am I correct in assuming the following: If a distributing fund trades in GBP and has a USD fund currency (e.g. VWRL) there would be no FX fees on trades but there would be FX fees when receiving dividend payments? Would the FX be handled by fund manager (e.g. Vanguard) or the broker (e.g. Freetrade)?
For accumulating version of a fund with trade currency GBP and fund currency USD (e.g. VWRP; subject of this thread) does currency of dividend payments become irrelevant from FX perspective or would there be some internal FX going on?
My pleasure, I was wondering the same regarding distributing funds and found this in an older FT thread (reply by Ops team in '18): Are there any FX fees for VUSA? As VUSA is traded on the LSE in GBP there are no FX charges for trading. The only FX to bear in mind is in relation to dividends as the income for this ETF is paid in USD, Freetrade don’t charge any FX fee for this but Crest will convert it to GBP.* CREST is the central securities depository for markets in the United Kingdom and for Irish stocks.
I’m not sure if this is still the case as this was a reply before FT built their in-house investment platform.
For accumulating funds, I would assume the reinvestment of the income follows a similar process as buying/selling securities within the ETF and any fees would be part of the ongoing charges of the fund, i.e. the 0.22%.
Is it normal for an ‘All World’ ETF to have almost 60% of its exposure in the US, some almost 70%?.. I know the US is obviously a massive player in the world, just wondered!