Only a few years ago exchange-traded funds were considered obscure investments, but today, serious investors are reportedly building entire portfolios from the fast-growing investment category through brokerage accounts, Dow Jones News reports.
Heretofore, ETFs were mainly used by institutional investors, but it was mostly individual shareholders who helped push the investment category to $211.7 billion as of Nov. 30, 2004, an increase of $79 billion in net flows from the year earlier.
Brokerage firms are achieving tangible results in efforts to promote the main selling points of ETFs, mainly their low costs and flexible trading advantages, to individual investors.
Online brokerage firms like
The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.