Inflation-Themed ETFs: Part II

As complicated as inflation

March 2024. Reading Time: 10 Minutes. Author: Nicolas Rabener.

SUMMARY

  • Inflation-themed ETFs have heterogeneous portfolios
  • However, commodities and oil have been better inflation hedges
  • And offer higher diversification benefits

INTRODUCTION

In November 2021 we analyzed inflation-themed ETFs (read Inflation-Themed ETFs: As Complicated as Inflation) and concluded that there were relatively few products on the market given the typical importance of inflation in investors’ minds.

Since then, inflation remained high in developed markets and almost reached 10% in the U.S. in 2022, which has led to more product launches. Given the passage of time, we can now better analyze the products’ track records and their ability to protect investors against inflation, which we do in this follow-up article.

INFLATION MEASURES

Most people equate inflation with the change in prices and there are many official and unofficial methodologies for measuring this. We use the U.S. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (“CPI”) and U.S. 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate (“BIR”) in this analysis. BIR is supposed to represent the expected inflation, but exhibited the same trends as the monthly change in CPI in the period from 2007 to 2024.