Exchange Traded Fund

Mr. Tan,
I just started investing in share and heard about ETF . Hope you can explain to me what is ETF?

REPLY
You can search "exchange traded fund" in Google.It gives you many references. Here is one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund

An exchange-traded fund (or ETF) is an investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks or bonds. An ETF represents a collection or "basket" of assets such as stocks, bonds, or futures. Institutional investors can redeem large blocks of shares of the ETF (known as "creation units") for the underlying assets or, alternately, exchange the underlying assets for creation units. This creation and redemption of shares enables institutions to engage in arbitrage and causes the value of the ETF to track the net asset value of the underlying assets. Most ETFs track an index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500.

An ETF takes the form of a collective investment scheme and combines the valuation feature of a mutual fund or unit investment trust, which can be purchased or redeemed at the end of each trading day for its net asset value, with the tradability feature of a closed-end fund, which trades throughout the trading day at prices that may be substantially more or less than its net asset value. Closed-end funds are not considered to be exchange-traded funds, even though they are funds and are traded on an exchange.

ETFs have been available in the US since 1993 and in Europe since 1999. ETFs traditionally have been index funds, but in 2008 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began to authorize the creation of actively-managed ETFs