ETFs differ most significantly from mutual funds in the way they are bought and sold. ETFs behave like stocks, and investors can buy or sell shares at any time throughout the day. Like stocks, ETFs also offer flexible trading options, such as stop and limit orders (a stop order sets a specific price at which ETF shares are to be purchased or sold, while a limit order sets a maximum or minimum price at which you are willing to buy or sell ETF shares, respectively) and the potential for such tactical hedging strategies as selling short (borrowing ETF shares to sell now in the hopes that you can buy them back more inexpensively later) or on margin (taking out a loan to buy ETF shares, or using ETF shares as collateral in an effort to leverage your existing portfolio beyond your initial investment).
Another potential advantage of ETFs is that, unlike many mutual funds, they typically have no sales charges. Plus, like most index funds, they generally offer low management fees. However, there are trading costs associated with an ETF, as there are for stocks. In many cases, low fees and expenses can outweigh trading costs, but this will depend on how frequently and in what quantity an investor trades.
ETFs offer a number of potential benefits that can make them extremely effective for helping investors reach specific long-term goals:
• Diversification
• Low fees1 and no sales load
• Intraday liquidity2
• Tax efficiency3
• Transparency4—and much more
ETFs come in every style and asset class in the investment rainbow. They can help investors generate income, achieve long-term growth, gain more complete diversification—and much more.
This post was republished with permission from the WisdomTree blog.
1Ordinary brokerage commissions apply.
2Investors can buy—or sell—shares at any time throughout the day.
3The creation/mechanism of ETFs is what allows them to be very tax efficient. Specifically, when portfolio holdings can be transferred on an “in-kind” basis during redemptions, it allows ETFs to be very tax efficient and able to minimize their capital gains distributions. The reason: When shares are redeemed in-kind, the ETF is not liquidating or selling shares on the market, which would trigger gains inside the ETF; rather, with in-kind redemptions, an exchange is made between qualified institutional investors and the fund company—in exchange for shares of the ETF, the qualified institutional investor receives underlying holdings of the fund on an in-kind basis, and this swapping of holdings for ETF shares does not trigger a taxable event for the fund.
4Holdings are displayed daily on the website.