Comments on: Index Funds vs ETFs

By: Christophe Keller

Christophe Keller — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:01:12 +0000

I live in Belgium, and want to start investing. Sadly there are no low-cost index funds offerings available like you have in the US (e.g. Vanguard). The only alternative are ETF’s.

As I am not very wealthy and want to minimize the impact of the transaction costs, I’ll only invest each three to six months, saving some amount to invest each period. This means I can kiss dollar cost averaging goodbye

Needless to say, I’m rather jealous of the possibilities for investing you have in the US. My hope is that through the competition between the online brokers the transaction costs will go down. Or that low-cost index funds become finally available to us, but I’m not very optimistic on this last one

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By: How to Live in Canada

How to Live in Canada — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:42:53 +0000

Hi ABC,

This explains why the TD e-series are so common for those with small portfolios right?

Thanks!

By: ABC

ABC — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:33:37 +0000

Step 3 – good point about Zecco – without trading commissions, ETFs are a pretty good deal. Don’t underestimate the power of automation.

One point about VTI and VFH for anyone else reading this – all the stocks in VFH are in VTI so you would only buy both if you want to own a higher proportion of financial stocks (ie banks) than is currently in VTI. VTI contains all the stocks on the US exchanges.

By: Step3

Step3 — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:45:03 +0000

I invest in both index funds and ETF’s. I wouldn’t have touched ETF’s before the arrival of Zecco.com, but with zero cost commissions ETF’s are suddenly cheaper than index funds for the small investor. A mutual fund companies last remaining advantage is automated investing. My ETF recommendations are VTI (total market index), VFH (vanguard financial ETF), and VQN (vanguard REIT). You can use yahoo finance to look at the differences between the ETF and the same vanguard index funds.

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Intelligent Speculator » Blog Archive » Investment Talking — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:02:33 +0000

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By: ABC

ABC — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:47:43 +0000

Andy – QQQQ is the stock symbol for Investco PowerShares QQQ ETF. This is based on the Nasdaq-100 which is the largest 100 companies listed on the Nasdaq by market capitalization.

I’m not sure what you mean by an “example of both” – a security can’t be both an index fund or an ETF – it has to be one or the other.