There’s an interesting study of contrasts in the 2019 snapshot vis-à-vis the present: while ARKG has between 2 and 4 European companies in its holdings in the entire period, their weights were substantially higher than that in IBB which – with between 13 and 32 European companies in its holdings – has the largest number of European companies in holdings among the 4 ETFs. In the present day, this situation has reversed; IBB now has both the highest weight and number of European constituents while ARKG has the lowest average weight per European company.
ARKG’s investment methodology is proprietary, i.e. it isn’t publicly available unlike the other ETFs. Ark Invest buys into companies that it deems to have the edge necessary to be a disruptor while the other fund managers rely on objective numbers and set criteria. Almost all of the ETFs have a heavy concentration in stocks of companies based in the U.S. – home to the world’s most overvalued equity market.
A record 44% of fund managers responding to a monthly survey conducted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch in June 2017 considered U.S. equities to be overvalued. Deloitte’s surveys reported that most Fortune 500 CFOs and fund managers held this belief in 2020. Mr. Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, reiterated this in 2021 and added that the market will correct soon.
When it comes to equities at least, the overvaluation issue can be put in more stark terms when considering the ratio between stock prices and fundamentals. Given that IBB has by far the largest number of holdings on both sides of the Atlantic relative to the other 3 ETFs, let’s parse out the ratios across the “snapshot” dates of IBB for a clearer picture.
Ratio Analysis: Europe versus North America
Let’s consider three ratios comparing the stock price of IBB’s constituent companies to their fundamentals – the Price to Earnings (PE), the Price to Sales (PS) and the Price to Earnings (PS). These ratios can be imagined to form a 3-dimensional axis that would describe a plane along which the price is observed. Each axis, in theory, should have the same effect on the plane. In practice, this does not hold true.
The prospect of overvaluation has an interesting effect on these ratios as reported by data services such as Bloomberg: metrics that are too high or too low are not reported as they’re not considered to hold any meaningful information for the investor. Thus, the proportion of tickers with unreported PE ratios relative to total number of tickers is calculated in both regions as well as the ETF in total for each of the “snapshot” dates.
Given ETFs don’t have overall ratios, proximate aggregations of these metrics are carried out in two formats to arrive at an effective proxy for regional contribution:
The average; wherein the reported ratios of each of the ETF’s constituents are averaged outright;
The weighted-average; wherein the reported ratios have each constituent’s weight factored in.
The picture that emerges is quite interesting.
