ETF Central (2024)

FAQs

What is the best website for ETF research? ›

Investing.com is one of the best websites and blogs for ETF research.

Low Liquidity

If an ETF is thinly traded, there can be problems getting out of the investment, depending on the size of your position relative to the average trading volume. The biggest sign of an illiquid investment is large spreads between the bid and the ask.

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.

Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification.

Summary: The Best Stock Research Websites & Tools

If you're looking for stock picks, Zacks and Motley Fool are great options. If you're looking for a heavy screener, FINVIZ should be your tool. For investment research, Morningstar, Seeking Alpha, and Yahoo! Finance are all viable sites.

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.

ETFs are designed to track the market, not to beat it

But many ETFs track a benchmarking index, which means the fund often won't outperform the underlying assets in the index. Investors who are looking to beat the market (potentially a riskier approach) may choose to look at other products and services.

Stock-picking offers an advantage over exchange-traded funds (ETFs) when there is a wide dispersion of returns from the mean. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer advantages over stocks when the return from stocks in the sector has a narrow dispersion around the mean.

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.

What is a lazy portfolio? ›

A lazy portfolio is a collection of investments that more or less runs on autopilot. Lazy portfolios are designed to weather changing market conditions without requiring investors to make significant changes to their asset allocation or goals.

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.

VTI is a total U.S. market fund and holds more than 3,500 stocks. VTI is better diversified and benefits from small and mid-cap stocks that grow into large caps. VOO is less diversified, tracking the performance of the S&P 500 Index. VOO excludes small and mid-cap stocks.

Average Return

In the past year, QQQ returned a total of 31.70%, which is significantly higher than VOO's 22.30% return. Over the past 10 years, QQQ has had annualized average returns of 17.98% , compared to 12.33% for VOO. These numbers are adjusted for stock splits and include dividends.

The largest Aggressive ETF is the iShares Core Aggressive Allocation ETF AOA with $1.83B in assets. In the last trailing year, the best-performing Aggressive ETF was AOA at 14.42%. The most recent ETF launched in the Aggressive space was the iShares ESG Aware Aggressive Allocation ETF EAOA on 06/12/20.

Ultimately, investors choosing an ETF need to ask 3 questions: What exposure does this ETF have? How well does the ETF deliver this exposure? And how efficiently can I access the ETF? Look at the ETF's underlying index (benchmark) to determine the exposure you're getting.

Before purchasing an ETF there are five factors to take into account 1) performance of the ETF 2) the underlying index of the ETF 3) the ETF's structure 4) when and how to trade the ETF and 5) the total cost of the ETF.

To find Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that fit your investment needs, use the ETF Evaluator, which you can find by selecting Research from Fidelity.com. To start finding ETFs, use the ETF Evaluator to search by sponsor, classification, and/or investment category.

The two ways to see how closely an ETF matches the index performance are 'tracking error' and 'tracking difference'. Tracking difference addresses how closely the ETF tracks the index returns, while tracking error reflects how consistent over time the tracking quality is.