TER (total expense ratio)

The total expense ratio, also published as ongoing charges, is the annual cost of running a fund stated as a percentage of the assets in it. It covers management, administration, custody and audit, and it is deducted from the fund's value in small daily amounts rather than invoiced. Trading costs inside the fund and any performance fee sit outside this figure and are disclosed separately.

Why it matters

Because the deduction happens inside the fund, it is the one cost in a portfolio that leaves no trace in your own records: no charge on a statement, no line in an export, nothing to reconcile. It is already inside every price you see and every return the fund reports, which is what makes it easy to overlook and hard to verify from the outside. The published percentage is also not the whole cost of holding a fund, since the spread you pay when trading it and any custody fee at your broker sit on top.

How BullBenchmark shows it

We cannot show a cost that never reaches your file, and we do not publish fund charges. What is on the page is the result after those charges have already been taken: the return of each fund position over the days you held it, set against the index lines over the same days, dividends counted on both sides. Fees your broker did charge you are read from your export and booked separately from cost basis rather than folded into it. Both treatments are visible on the demo portfolio.

Related terms

Tracking difference · ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) · Cost basis

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