Worst Performing ETFs Of 2018

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)

Tables data measure total annual returns for 2018.

Email Sumit Roy at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter sumitroy2