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Exchange Traded Fund. A fund that tracks an index, but can be traded like a stock. ETFs always bundle together the securities that are in an index; they never track actively managed mutual fund portfolios (because most actively managed funds only disclose their holdings a few times a year, so the ETF would not know when to adjust its holdings most of the time). Investors can do just about anything with an ETF that they can do with a normal stock, such as short selling. Because ETFs are traded on stock exchanges, they can be bought and sold at any time during the day (unlike most mutual funds). Their price will fluctuate from moment to moment, just like any other stock’s price, and an investor will need a broker in order to purchase them, which means that he/she will have to pay a commission. On the plus side, ETFs are more tax-efficient than normal mutual funds, and since they track indexes they have very low operating and transaction costs associated with them. There are no sales loads or investment minimums required to purchase an ETF. The first ETF created was the Standard and Poor’s Deposit Receipt (SPDR, pronounced “Spider”) in 1993. SPDRs gave investors an easy way to track the S&P 500 without buying an index fund, and they soon become quite popular.
Initialism of exchange-traded fund.
ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund.
An ETF is registered with the SEC as an investment company, and it shares trade on a stock exchange intraday like any other public company. The ETF is like a mutual fund, however, in that its assets consist of a basket of stocks deposited by institutional investors. The American Stock Exchange launched the first ETF in 1993. That ETF was called an SPDR, and it tracked the S&P 500. Today, the most common security portfolio for a domestically traded ETF remains a broad-based equity index, although an ETF may instead track a specific sector. The global or international ETF also exists; this variant usually tracks a particular foreign national or regional index. ETF shares can be sold short or bought on margin. The ETF also has a slight tax advantage over a mutual fund. Nevertheless, commissions paid to buy and sell ETF shares tend to make the mutual fund a more attractive investment than the ETF for many investors.
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This glossary post was last updated: 21st November, 2021 | 0 Views.