Advice buying or selling etfs?

[mrsb000]

Anyone have any experience buying or selling etfs could use some help on these

[aiki14]

Originally Posted by mrsb000

Anyone have any experience buying or selling etfs could use some help on these

They trade the same as stocks, any brokerage account that trades stocks can trade ETF's.

[Svenwulf]

first, i just want to say etfs are evil.

etfs offer a simple way to diversify one's portfolio, which is a good thing. the problem comes with each products specific holdings- you wanna own telecom, your gonna own the best and worst in the category. additionally, many etfs trade at a premium to their nav, due to custodial fees. although some etfs gain tax advantages in a qualified retirement plan, this is not always the case. in fact, profits on a popular fund gld are taxed as a "collectible."

i am in no way a financial professional, and hold no financial license or degree. a good starting point is investopedia dot com. also etfs have many websites from the investment banks that run them to sites like the etfzone dot com. best wishes.

[BentleyVTech]

my investment professor said etf's are where he'd put his money, especially if you dont have enough to really diversify yourself. overall you can find etf's that have a very low expense ratio that are solid picks...and you dont have all the fee's associated with a mutual fund...SPY for example...and thats the one he recommended when I took his class a couple years ago, and its more than double since. ETF's might be "evil" in your experiences, but you cant call yourself diversified if you buy a "telecom" etf, just because you hold multiple companies. buying a stock indexed etf, emerging markets(EEM for example), or even small cap growth etf's. Theres nearly every kind for anyones liking, you just gotta know what to pick. Yeah like you said above, you get the best and worst of breed with sector specific etf's, but if you believe that sector will outperform others then an etf would be good choice. a "telecom" etf would be a good idea to diversify WITHIN the sector, rather than trying to pick the 1 stock thats going to win big.

I definitely wouldnt say etf's are evil, I'd say they are great, but you need to know how to use them...I'd pick a sector or market you want to replicate, and then find an etf that is replicating that with the lowest expense ratio...because as you know, past performance doesnt correlate to future performance.