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.

ETFs are most often linked to a benchmarking index, meaning that they are often not designed to outperform that index. Investors looking for this type of outperformance (which also, of course, carries added risks) should perhaps look to other opportunities.

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.

1. Morningstar. Morningstar is one of the world's most widely respected equity research firms, used by both retail and professional investors alike. It's one of the best stock research websites because of its focus on hard data and emphasis on the long-term value investor.

Like any business, even low-cost ETFs need to generate revenue to cover their costs. Like any business, even low-cost ETFs need to generate revenue to cover their costs. Plenty of ETFs fail to garner the assets necessary to cover these costs and, consequently, ETF closures happen regularly.

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? ›

The key principles of a lazy portfolio are diversification, low fees, and patience. Instead of actively building and managing a portfolio, you invest in a handful of low-cost index funds and hold onto them for the long term.

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 39.12%, which is significantly higher than VOO's 27.70% return. Over the past 10 years, QQQ has had annualized average returns of 18.40% , compared to 12.59% 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 $1.82B in assets. In the last trailing year, the best-performing Aggressive ETF was EAOA at 14.70%. 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.