Why expense ratios matter more than you think An ETF’s expense ratio is deducted from the fund’s assets every year, reducing your effective return. A 0.03% fee on a passive index ETF versus 0.60% on an actively managed fund may look trivial, but compounded over 20 or 30 years the gap in final wealth can be substantial. This calculator lets you input any two fee levels and see exactly how they diverge year by year. ...
KODEX 200 and TIGER 200 track the same KOSPI 200 index with negligible fee difference (~0.01%)Monthly $1,500 investment over 5 years compounds to roughly $126,000, yet fee drag difference totals only $50–$150 in absolute dollarsFor Korean retail investors with $500k+, fee efficiency starts mattering; below that threshold, trading costs and entry timing dominateUS investors face hidden FX spreads (0.5–1.5%) and custody fees that dwarf any 0.01% fee gap entirely—a critical disconfirming factorData from official ETF prospectuses and yfinance; exact fee impact depends on entry timing, rebalancing frequency, and account size Two ETFs, One Index, One Micro-Difference Monthly $30K investment 20-year compound growth simulation KODEX 200 and TIGER 200 are South Korean equity ETFs, both engineered to track the KOSPI 200 index[ETF.com Reference]. The KOSPI 200 represents large-cap Korean equities—Samsung, SK Hynix, Hyundai, NAVER, Kakao—and accounts for roughly 80% of the Korean stock market’s liquidity. Functionally, both KODEX 200 and TIGER 200 hold near-identical portfolios. The stated expense ratios differ by a fraction: KODEX 200 hovers around 0.08% annually, while TIGER 200 sits at roughly 0.07%[Morningstar ETF Data]. That 0.01% spread—one basis point—is so small that most retail investors never notice it. Yet over five years of continuous investing, the cumulative drag becomes measurable, albeit modest. ...