3.4  Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)

Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are a type of UIT that contains stocks, bonds, or other assets. The assets are usually chosen so that they track an index.

ETFs track an index by owning a basket of representative investments from the index. The idea is that the performance of a sample of investments will be similar to the performance of the index as a whole. The basket of securities is held by a custodian who issues a fixed number of shares that can be purchased by shareholders.

ETFs tend to track their indexes well, but tracking is inherently imperfect due to such issues as cash held, fund fees, and the liquidity of the assets within the fund. Thus ETFs are subject to tracking risk, which is the risk that the fund will not adequately mimic the index.

Like closed-end funds, ETFs are bought and sold on an exchange through broker-dealers, and individual ETF shares are not redeemable. The exception is that large investors or institutions can purchase creation units and redeem them for the underlying assets.

The market price of the ETF remains close to the per-share NAV of the underlying assets. The SEC classifies ETFs as open-end companies because large investors can sometimes redeem the shares or units, but in most ways, ETFs resemble closed-end funds.

The most well-known ETF is the Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipt, whose acronym SPDR is often referred to as “spider.” Buying SPDR shares allows an investor to imitate the performance of a broad index (the S&P 500) without paying all the costs of an index fund.

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