Friday, October 9, 2009

ETF's Are Great

by Mike Swanson

As of June 2007, SPY ETF has become the largest exchange stock trading fund in the world. It is sponsored by PDR services LLC, which in itself is a subsidiary of American Stock Exchange LLC. It does, however, have some considerable competition on the market. The most formidable ETFs holding stock picks are listed on the New York Stock exchange as IVV, RSP, SH, RSU, SSO, RSW, SDS, UPRO and SPXU.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is an innovative way of trading on the stock exchange. The value of one of these funds is set at the value of the assets that it represents. This would effectively be the value over the entire trading day. The 680 ETFs currently account for $610 billion on the US markets.

Their popularity is based on the easy diversification that they facilitate across the entire index. In addition, ETFs are usually much cheaper to manage than most other trading options. They are also much more tax efficient than shares and stocks. As they can be bought at any time during the day they are also more flexible. Unlike other options, there is much more market transparency to ETFs.

Many critics have railed against ETFs for various reasons. Firstly, they do not provide sufficient flexibility. Secondly, they are short-term in their scope. Thirdly, any tax advantages are minimal to investors that usually use tax deferred accounts. Finally, it has been shown that they can often be used to manipulate market prices. However, many agree that an ETF can still be a wise investment.

The Index Participation Shares (IDSs) of the late 1980s is the precursor to the ETF. IDSs were traded on both the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PSE) and the American Stock Exchange (ASE). The US courts put a stop to there use following a lawsuit from Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1990.

Following this the Toronto Stock Exchange began trading its own version of Index Participation Shares. These were so popular that the American Stock exchange started looking for something similar that could pass US regulation. The result was the ETF. The Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (SPDRs) became the first ETF in the United States. They are often referred to as "spiders" or "spyders".

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