Why ETF Return Figures Differ Across Data Providers

Summary

The document addresses why year-to-date ETF return figures can disagree across financial websites, including a case where one provider showed two different percentages. It does not identify what the second figure represents, so the specific discrepancy remains unresolved.

The response points to several possible causes: differences in prices or calculation methods across vendors, and differences in how often data is refreshed within a provider’s system. Stale data is offered as a possible explanation in the case discussed. For a dependable comparison, it recommends obtaining the return series and calculating the returns directly. The discussion is brief and provides no worked calculation or evidence establishing which cause applies to the original figures.

Key ideas

• ETF return figures can vary across providers because of pricing or calculation differences.
• A provider’s update frequency can lead to stale return data.
• Recalculating returns from downloaded data can help resolve discrepancies.

Tags

# ETF performance/returns


# ETF performance/returns












I was going over some ETF return data on yahoo finance and encountered some numbers that did not make sense to me.

The image below shows a ytd return of 17.94% and 13.52%. I checked ETF.com and ETFdb and the first number seems to be the right value. what does 13.52% represent?

Also none of the sites I check show the exact same values for return over the same period. Is this maybe because some calculate returns from market open instead of close, or could it be data issues/discrepancies from source to source?

## Answer by Chris (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/45404

Any number of reasons...between vendors, could be small pricing discrepancies, calc differences, etc. Within a given system, it's likely attributable to update frequency. I've seen some providers with data published that was months old. Per the comments, looks like this falls into that camp. When in doubt, download returns and do the calculations yourself.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.