ETF Soapbox

The ETF Soapbox is our analysts' blog, full of unvarnished opinion about what's good and what's bad in the world of ETFs. Here we will stay away from offering investment advice (the good stuff is reserved for paying clients), but this free, moderated forum welcomes your replies and questions.

It's the Asset Class, Stupid!

The real reason individual investors increasingly choose ETFs
March 30, 2007.

Retail investors have replaced institutional investors as the primary source of new inflows into exchange traded funds. And with all the media hype surrounding ETFs it’s little wonder. But of all the benefits commonly touted as reasons for the funds’ soaring popularity many commentators miss one of the most important reasons of all: ETFs are the perfect asset allocation tool, and asset allocation is the most important decision an investor can make.

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Forget Fees!

Why the Obsession with Fees Puts the Focus in the Wrong Place
February 26, 2007.

Investors have been indoctrinated with the belief that funds fees only rob you of performance, and should be avoided or minimized to the extent possible. As far as mutual funds are concerned that’s probably true, since few active managers are able to consistently outperform their benchmarks anyway. But for ETFs it’s different: fees are largely irrelevant.

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ETFs: A Fundamentally Different Approach

Why the Warmed-Over Mutual Fund Approach is the Wrong Approach
January 22, 2007.

When the world’s first exchange traded fund, the S&P 500 SPDR, was listed over a decade ago, things were simpler. People were broadly familiar with the S&P 500 index, and assuming an investor had already decided to try to track the index, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the ETF structure versus that of a comparable index mutual fund was sufficient as far as ETF analysis was concerned.

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