I'm trying to wrap my head around ETFs and am looking at various metrics to compare and trying to understand them, but I'm having some troubles to interpret them.
To understand the characteristics of a capitalizing vs a distributing ETF I'm comparing the Xtrackers DAX UCITS ETF 1C (LU0274211480) vs. its "sister", the Xtrackers DAX Income UCITS ETF 1D. After plotting the "Asset Under Management" (AUM) column from their data history tables, I noticed the following:
- there's a huge drop near the end of 2013 in the capitalizing ETF (blue)
- during 2014, the AUM merely changes
- from 2015 the AUM starts climbing again but stagnates towards 2016 and is slowly dropping ever since
- the capitalizing ETF is all over the place, while the distributing ETF seems to be relatively "calm" over the years
How can we interpret these observations? I'm especially curious about 1. since imho this should have impacted the NAV somehow, but apparently it did not. So does this mean there have been changes in other metrics as well (like liquidity or outstanding shares) that compensate this drop?
EDIT:
Add chart showing relative AUM development (values divded by first value of the series)