Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the ETF

[whodidntante]

The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about the 30th anniversary of the ETF. Non-paywalled link below.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-first- ... _permalink

Not a quote, but my own commentary.

ETFs have helped investors get access to low-cost, transparent, portable investments from any brokerage and have furthered the passive investing revolution. ETFs also help investors defer capital gains taxes on an ongoing basis because they can shed appreciated shares through heartbeat trades and the redemption process. ETFs can run razor-thin cash margins in many cases since they do not need to hold cash to meet redemptions. ETFs also enable intraday trading and push more trading costs to those doing the trading instead of other shareholders.

What are your own thoughts on ETFs? Do you use them?

[Grt2bOutdoors]

I hold two ETF's. Since they trade like stock during market hours any one contemplating a purchase would be well-advised to use a limit order when doing their buying and selling on price, especially if there are mispricings which could lead to a large difference in ETF premium compared to underlying NAV of the actual fund. And it has happened before where folks found out they overpaid.

[steadyosmosis]

What are your own thoughts on ETFs? Do you use them?

Yes, I use ETFs almost exclusively, ever since I moved to Schwab 15-20 years ago.
SCHB, SCHF, VTI, BND are the workhorses in my ~60/40 portfolio.
I like that my transactions occur almost instantly when the market is open.

[Abalyon]

One of the only financial "innovations" that have helped the average investor.