EFG is a passive index fund that owns the growth half of the non-U.S. developed world, and its recent numbers expose a genuine style problem rather than a fund failure. The share price closed near $124.02 in early September 2026. It is up 12.4% over twelve months, yet that gain trails both its own index and the broader EAFE market it is built from. The gap between the two is the fund's total drag, and it is the central fact of this report.
The drag has two legs, a 0.34% expense ratio and a persistent tracking error, and together they have shrunk the fund's long run edge below the index for the first time in its modern history. Over a ten year span that ended in 2023, EFG delivered 4.90% a year before taxes. The MSCI EAFE Growth Index delivered 5.15% over the same span. The compounding of that small annual gap over two decades is what turns it into a meaningful loss of value for the holder.
The honest way to frame the investment case is that the buyer is not paying for stock picking or even for perfect indexing. The buyer is paying, at a 0.34% annual cost, for the cleanest available expression of non-U.S. developed market growth, and for a fund whose structure is so large and liquid that it rarely trades at a discount to its own value. Whether that expression is worth its fee at this point in the cycle is a question the numbers below answer.