This page documents how ETF comparisons on Financial Expert Class are produced — the “VWCE vs WEBN” style head-to-heads, the “best UCITS ETFs for…” lists, and the fund tables inside country guides. It exists so that when I say one fund beats another, you can see the machine that produced that sentence, check the inputs, and disagree with me precisely.
Who does this
Me, Kestutis Balciunas — a self-taught European retail investor who has held UCITS ETFs with his own money for 11+ years. No CFA, no analyst team, no issuer relationships. I read the fund documents myself and I show my working. Where a claim needs expertise I do not have (for example, a country’s tax code), I cite the primary source rather than pretending.
The criteria and weights
Every fund comparison works through the same six dimensions. Weights reflect what compounds over decades for a buy-and-hold European investor.
| Criterion | Weight | What I actually check |
|---|---|---|
| Total cost | 25% | TER from the current KID/factsheet, plus the costs the TER hides: tracking difference vs the index over the longest common period, and typical bid-ask spread on the main listing. |
| Index & exposure | 20% | What the index actually holds (from the index provider’s methodology — MSCI, FTSE Russell, S&P), country/sector concentration, small-cap inclusion, how “all-world” the all-world claim really is. |
| Domicile & tax efficiency | 20% | Ireland vs Luxembourg domicile and the US dividend withholding consequences (15% vs 30% treaty leakage), plus per-country quirks documented in how I compute tax examples. |
| Fund size & viability | 15% | AUM and fund age from the issuer or justETF, with the snapshot date stated. Small funds carry closure risk; brand-new funds carry no track record. |
| Replication & structure | 10% | Physical vs synthetic, full vs sampled, securities-lending policy and its revenue split, accumulating vs distributing share classes. |
| Practical availability | 10% | Which European brokers and savings plans actually carry the fund, in which currencies and listings — a superior fund you cannot buy is not superior. |
A fund is excluded from recommendation entirely if it is not UCITS-compliant, if I cannot obtain a current KID/factsheet, or if its AUM is so small that closure risk dominates every other property.
Data sources
- Issuer KIDs and factsheets — iShares, Vanguard, Amundi, Xtrackers/DWS, SPDR/State Street, Invesco, VanEck, WisdomTree, HANetf — for TER, domicile, replication, distribution policy and AUM. This is always the first stop; a blog summary is never the source.
- justETF for screening, listings and cross-checking fund data.
- Index providers — MSCI, FTSE Russell, S&P Dow Jones Indices — for what the underlying index includes and excludes.
- Regulator sources — ESMA and national registers (BaFin, AFM, Central Bank of Ireland, CSSF) for UCITS authorisation questions.
- Morningstar for long-period performance attribution, credited when used.
How performance is handled
Past performance appears in comparisons for one purpose: measuring how faithfully a fund tracked its index (tracking difference), which is a quality signal. It is never presented as a forecast. When two funds track the same index, I compare their tracking, costs and structure — not their returns, which are the index’s returns. When they track different indices, the article says the comparison is really about the indices, because it is.
Data cut-off and update cadence
Every TER, AUM and yield figure carries an “as of” date tied to the document it came from. Issuers change TERs and close funds; a comparison is a snapshot, not a subscription. A visible Reviewed date appears on a comparison only when I have actually re-pulled the figures and logged that re-verification — the log mechanics are described on the editorial process page. Material errors, once found, are fixed and recorded on the public corrections log.
Where the interactive tools fit
The UCITS ETF comparison tool and the dividend calendar run on curated datasets maintained under this same methodology; the crawlable snapshots live on the data pages with download links, so you can check or reuse the underlying numbers.
Conflict of interest
No ETF issuer pays this site anything — there are no issuer relationships at all. The site’s revenue is broker referral commissions and the paid Substack, both documented in the affiliate disclosure. A broker commission cannot influence which fund wins a comparison, because brokers do not care which UCITS tracker you buy through them. Where a comparison links a broker to buy a fund, that link may be an affiliate link; the fund verdict is computed before any broker is mentioned.
What this methodology cannot do
It cannot rank funds for your specific tax situation, and it cannot predict which index will outperform. It can tell you which fund is the cheapest, largest, most tax-efficient and most faithful vehicle for an exposure you have already chosen. Choosing the exposure is the bigger decision, and that is what the site’s educational articles are for.