AFI the 800 pound gorilla is going senile and slowly dying

See: > AFI - Australian Foundation Investment Co - Cheat Sheet

<<
With invested assets over $8.5 billion, the Australian Foundation Investment Company (AFI) is the 800 pound Closed End Fund gorilla on the ASX. But not only hasn't its portfolio outperformed the cheaper ASX200 ETFs (A200, IOZ, STW) over any period greater than 5 years, but it simply can't do so. In this post, I reveal the index-hugging nature of AFI (including using options) and argue that its greater Total Expense Ratio (TER) means it is destined to underperform ASX200 ETFs with TERs as low as 0.04%. AFI often trades at ridiculous premiums to Pre-tax NTA but will inevitably drift to a permanent discount in the long run. AFI has many unobvious pitfalls too: a massive tax liability anytime it sells longstanding positions, a resulting bias to be slower to rebalance if it means realising large gains, over $115m in international stocks (for a new international LIC that never emerges), and an actual TER that is 0.22% (appreciably higher than the 0.14% figure it advertises, and five times higher than the 0.04% of the A200 ETF).
>>