An awful December pushed the U.S. stock market solidly into the red for 2018. When the ill-fated year came to a close, the S&P 500 found itself down 4.4%, its biggest loss since the financial crisis.
We outlined the performance of the S&P 500, the stock market sectors and all the major asset classes in our top-performing ETFs of 2018 article.
In that story, we included tables of the ETFs that did the very best in a negative year. Here we take a look at the other side of the ledger, the worst-performing.
Short VIX ETPs Demolished
Unsurprisingly, the threshold to make these lists was quite high (or low, depending how you look at it). The all-encompassing list, which is selected from the entire universe of U.S.-listed ETFs, features funds with losses from 56% to 92%.
A product that shorts the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), the ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY), topped the list. The ETF crumbled in February, pushed lower by the largest-ever one-day increase in the VIX.
Leveraged and inverse ETFs tied to natural gas, crude oil, biotech, regional banks and China also fared poorly in 2018.
Worst-Performing ETFs Of 2018 (all-encompassing)
Commodities & EM Swoon
The picture doesn’t look much brighter after stripping out leveraged, inverse and VIX products. This narrower list features ETFs with losses ranging from 31% to nearly 50%.
Commodity-focused funds like the VanEck Vectors Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) and the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF (XES) were the worst of this bunch.
Several other energy and emerging-market-related ETFs made up the rest of the list.
Worst-Performing ETFs Of 2018 (excluding leveraged/inverse/VIX ETPs)
| Ticker | Fund | % Return |
| REMX | VanEck Vectors Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF | -49.47 |
| XES | SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF | -46.99 |
| OIH | VanEck Vectors Oil Services ETF | -44.98 |
| PSCE | Invesco S&P SmallCap Energy ETF | -42.98 |
| IEZ | iShares U.S. Oil Equipment & Services ETF | -42.46 |
| TUR | iShares MSCI Turkey ETF | -41.48 |
| PXJ | Invesco Dynamic Oil & Gas Services ETF | -39.82 |
| CNXT | VanEck Vectors ChinaAMC SME-ChiNext ETF | -39.48 |
| SCIF | VanEck Vectors India Small-Cap Index ETF | -37.41 |
| SCIN | Columbia India Small Cap ETF | -36.31 |
| ASHS | Xtrackers Harvest CSI 500 China-A Shares Small Cap ETF | -35.91 |
| CQQQ | Invesco China Technology ETF | -34.77 |
| KWEB | KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF | -33.88 |
| AGT | iShares MSCI Argentina and Global Exposure ETF | -32.69 |
| AADR | AdvisorShares Dorsey Wright ADR ETF | -31.54 |
Tables data measure total annual returns for 2018.
Email Sumit Roy at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter sumitroy2
