What are the main differences between ETFs and Mutual Funds?

Answer 1

The truth is you need to invest in the fund that will make you the most money. Look at rankings monthly Both ETFs and Mutual Funds allow for broad diversification or narrow sector concentration (e.g., industry, country, foreign currency, debt instead of equity) by a purchase of one single holding. They can be described as "baskets of stocks" that have some kind of common "theme." There are however several main differences: ETFs trade on exchanges like stocks and can be bought and sold at any time during the exchange trading sessions, although some of them may be extremely thinly traded. Mutual Funds, on the other hand, have to be usually redeemed or purchased only at the Net Asset Value, based on closing prices for the day. Thus, if there is a negative event, you cannot use an automated sell stop and have to ride the prices all the way to the day's close. Nevertheless, the problems with liquidity under normal economic conditions are very rare with Mutual Funds. Unlike many Mutual Funds, ETFs do not have minimums to invest, minimum holding periods or early withdrawal fees. Mutual Funds are likely to have different classes of shares A/B/or C, which may have to be held for a certain minimum time to avoid fees when selling (sometimes 2 to 3 years, or more). Both ETFs and Mutual Funds deduct managerial and operational expenses from your (growing or shrinking) investment, but when compared especially to Load Mutual Funds, ETFs on average have lower such deductions. ETF trades, on the other hand, will be garnished with brokerage commission fees. However, nowadays, at discount online brokers they are almost negligible. Highly liquid ETFs, those with large daily volumes, are complemented with options that trade on Options Exchanges. Such options may be useful in hedging larger or riskier positions. Mutual Funds are not optionable. Mutual Funds usually cannot be bought on margin or sold short by an investor. This can be done easily with ETFs. Also, all ETFs are available through almost any broker. That is not always true about Mutual Funds that have specific agreements with different brokerage houses. Unlike Mutual Funds, ETFs may be highly leveraged, buy on margin or trade options, employ short selling, or use complicated derivatives to achieve, for example, inverse performance of given indices (e.g., SKF). This may be useful for anybody wanting to employ leverage in IRA or 401K accounts. Sources: http://www.amfi.com/ratings/mutual-fund-rankings

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