Has anyone heard of iShares?

April 22, 2008

Posted by knor208

( 2 ratings )

Hi, "I" shares are EFT's or exchange traded funds offered by Barkey's Bank. EFT's are a mix of features of mutual funds in that you are buying groups of stocks or bonds but they trade like stocks, so they are more liquid. Mutual funds are bought or sold after the market closes, so if you have a fund up 10 points at noon you cant sell it at noon. you can enter an order but it won't be executed until after4:00, so if the market truns around and the fund is down you sell at the final number. Actually you wont even know the fund is up or down until the next day. The eft can be bought or sold anytime time market is open. Most etf's track a indice such as the S&P 500. so it buy all the companies in the 500 and the etf should almost completely track the performance of the 500. there are some EFT that are now not only tracking an indice but trying to outperform it. So it might adjust the wieght of some of the companies in the 500. The other good aspect of ETF is the fact that the expense ratio is much lower than a mutual fund, usually at least 1 point or so. so yes it is a good place to start but you still shuld follw the rules of investing ie investigate the ETF, diverisfy your investments which you can do with ETF's.

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