Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 14, 2013?

Article Excerpt

The ETF, or exchange traded fund, is the biggest advance for individual investors since the introduction of discount brokers. But keep in mind that ETFs are a limited-purpose investing tool. You might think of an ETF as a discount version of a mutual fund. Instead of actively managing the ETF’s portfolio, the fund operator generally manages the fund so that it mirrors the performance of a market index. This lets the operator charge an MER (management expense ratio) of as little as 0.1%, compared to an average MER on conventional mutual funds of 2.6%. Thanks to this fee discrepancy, ETFs automatically perform better than many actively managed mutual funds. That’s because few mutual funds beat the index by a wide enough margin to offset their MERs. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. So you can buy or sell, or sell them short, any time the market is open. In contrast, you can only buy or sell a mutual fund…