ETF Central (2024)

FAQs

Why I don't invest in ETFs? ›

Commissions and Expenses

Every time you buy or sell a stock, you might pay a commission. This is also the case when it comes to buying and selling ETFs. Depending on how often you trade an ETF, trading fees can quickly add up and reduce your investment's performance.

Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification. But the number of ETFs is not what you should be looking at.

At any given time, the spread on an ETF may be high, and the market price of shares may not correspond to the intraday value of the underlying securities. Those are not good times to transact business. Make sure you know what an ETF's current intraday value is as well as the market price of the shares before you buy.

Generally speaking, fewer than 10 ETFs are likely enough to diversify your portfolio, but this will vary depending on your financial goals, ranging from retirement savings to income generation.

There are a few reasons why ETFs generally die. Low assets under management, high fees, poor performance, and short track records are closely associated with the probability of closure. In 2023, there were 244 ETF closures with an average age of 5.4 years and average assets under management of only $54 million.

ETF closures are rare, but they do happen. Here's what to do in case it happens to a fund you own. Anna-Louise is a former investing and retirement writer for NerdWallet.

A Classic Lazy Portfolio contains the main traditional asset classes, with the aim to achieve above-average returns while taking a below-average risk. A Modern/Alternative Lazy Portfolio can use particular assets/strategies, with the aim of obtaining an extra return.

SPY, VOO and IVV are among the most popular S&P 500 ETFs. These three S&P 500 ETFs are quite similar, but may sometimes diverge in terms of costs or daily returns. Investors generally only need one S&P 500 ETF.

Average Return

In the past year, QQQ returned a total of 35.87%, which is significantly higher than VOO's 28.51% return. Over the past 10 years, QQQ has had annualized average returns of 18.69% , compared to 12.90% for VOO. These numbers are adjusted for stock splits and include dividends.

Leveraged ETF prices tend to decay over time, and triple leverage will tend to decay at a faster rate than 2x leverage. As a result, they can tend toward zero.

What happens if an ETF goes bust? ›

Liquidation of ETFs is strictly regulated; when an ETF closes, any remaining shareholders will receive a payout based on what they had invested in the ETF. Receiving an ETF payout can be a taxable event.

Interest rate changes are the primary culprit when bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lose value. As interest rates rise, the prices of existing bonds fall, which impacts the value of the ETFs holding these assets.

Specifically, a fund is prohibited from: acquiring more than 3% of a registered investment company's shares (the “3% Limit”); investing more than 5% of its assets in a single registered investment company (the “5% Limit”); or. investing more than 10% of its assets in registered investment companies (the “10% Limit”).

The majority of individual investors should, however, seek to hold 5 to 10 ETFs that are diverse in terms of asset classes, regions, and other factors. Investors can diversify their investment portfolio across several industries and asset classes while maintaining simplicity by buying 5 to 10 ETFs.

Over the long run, they do compound—those fee differences—and investors have been putting a lot more money into VOO versus SPY. That is the reason why we view VOO slightly better than SPY. And that is just the basic approach, which is the lower the investor can pay, the better the investment is.

If you're looking for an easy solution to investing, ETFs can be an excellent choice. ETFs typically offer a diversified allocation to whatever you're investing in (stocks, bonds or both). You want to beat most investors, even the pros, with little effort.

So if you're happy with a portfolio that performs comparably to the stock market as a whole, then sticking to S&P 500 ETFs alone isn't a bad idea. However, if you assemble a portfolio of individual stocks that perform better, you might enjoy a 12% or 15% return over time -- or more.

You expose your portfolio to much higher risk with sector ETFs, so you should use them sparingly, but investing 5% to 10% of your total portfolio assets may be appropriate. If you want to be highly conservative, don't use these at all.