Passive investing advocates will always say that most unit trusts or mutual funds cannot beat the index and an investor is better off buying an index fund. This post will investigate the returns of STI ETF and the Singapore Equity Unit Trusts and ranks their performance.

Scope of Study

The source of data is SPDR STI ETF and Fundsupermart for Unit Trusts. To make a fair comparison, we will only consider funds which invest solely in Singapore equities. Data is taken as at 31 Jul 13. We will only compare 5-year and 10-year performance since we have sufficient data and any returns in a period shorter than 5 years is not meaningful. The Unit Trusts are notorious for their high sales charge and management fees. We will examine the impact of sales charge on investment returns. I have also factored the brokerage charges of 0.28% for STI ETF and ......