Exchange-Traded Mutual Fund - ETMF

  

The stereotypical process of buying a mutual fund involves a relatively complicated procedure. First, you talk to your financial advisor about your goals. Then you listen to them recommend a fund that fits into some type of investment strategy (highest commission structure, maybe?). Finally, you go off and live your life, while they launch the mysterious process (and byzantine paperwork) necessary to buy into the fund. (Or you just go to a website and fill out a form and wire in the dough; hello, Schwab.)

Exchange traded mutual funds streamline the process. They provide the ability to buy a mutual fund on an open exchange, much like buying an individual stock. They essentially form a subset of Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs. The goal is to buy into a basket of stocks (or other assets) with one investment vehicle.

Using exchange traded mutual funds provides efficient diversification. Plus, the mutual fund aspect gives you access to some of the benefits of actively managed funds, rather than the index-based funds that populate much of the rest of the ETF space. In theory, professionals running your money should be better than just an index of a given set of stocks, but in practice, that no longer happens. (It did regularly in the 70s and 80s when pro fund managers regularly beat the market.) Today, with taxes and so many competitors, "deals" are relatively easy to spot, and most fund managers lag index funds over 5-10 year periods of time. With taxes, it's even worse, as fund managers sell, realize gains, get taxed, and add even more friction to the process.

See: Net Asset Value. See: Mutual Fund.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Are ETFs?275 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop shmoop what are efs Well first this

00:07

is the random financial terms you want to be asked

00:10

in the financial term spelling bee and second you should

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know that e t f stands for exchange traded fund

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f's are kissing cousins of index funds with one key

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subtle but important difference f don't change at least generally

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speaking an index fund might reflect the transportation industry and

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have so much exposure to ford gm united airlines tesla

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etcetera But it's required tohave say sixty five percent of

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its exposure to companies based in the united states in

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its charter every month that index fund has to re

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balanced that exposure So if the auto companies do very

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poorly in a given month index fund has to re

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balance by buying mohr shares of those auto companies to

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make up the difference you know given that they've performed

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poorly relative toa airlines trucking company's railroads jeff howard segways

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and so on But in a t f the fund

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is basically set once and the shares just really kind

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of float if over a decade the auto companies do

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really well then in an e t f the auto

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companies will just have a dominant influence on the overall

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performance of the fund The management company doesn't have to

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buy and sell shares regularly in an e t f

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till fulfill the legal promises it agreed to at the

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outset of the fund in the way in index fund

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re balances its shares by buying and selling them So

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what does that mean to you Well it means that

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fc may drift in given directions like this guy For

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example a generic technology e t f might have had

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a total exposure of say five percent to internet stocks

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in the beginning of nineteen ninety seven but amazon ebay

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yahoo netflix and a well performed massively better than the

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broader technology market which did well but just not omg

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dot com well so that five percent waiting twenty years

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later might be more like fifty percent or mohr of

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that particular e t f but one other key aspect

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of it is that it's traded like a stock i

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e in one block and trade throughout the day there's

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a bid and an ask price The bids are all

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added up and shares in the fund can be bought

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And sold at any time throughout the day Although the

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market sets the price of an f just like it

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does on a stock Well there now you're all ready

02:28

for the financial term spelling bee And they might also

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ask you to spell lipo Yeah you might want to 00:02:33.69 --> [endTime] write that one on your arm

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