Slim Ayadi: Cost. In my opinion, it will always be more expensive to manage transactions/rebalancing/corp actions/div reinvestment/tax optimisation by your own. On the flip side, it’s less fun and it’s more difficult to achieve the right flavor of risk and opportunities.

Thomas Brandt: They’re well suited to people who prefer passive investing. Researching, building and tracking a fullly diversified portfolio takes a lot of time .If you like your portfolio and are ok with your own active management, then etfs aren’t necessarily a good fit for you.I only use ETFs to gain exposure to assets I can’t buy, or don’t want to manage on my own ( ie commodities, gold, oil, foreign assets) .

Helen Sriubiskis: When I am older, I plan to switch to a mostly ETF portfolio so don’t have to “manage” a portfolio. (Similar to what W.Buffett recommended.)

Jack Semura: Sometimes overlooked is that ETFs and CEFs can often be bought at a discount to NAV. If a CEF is trading, say, at a 10 percent discount to NAV, it can be an advantage to indirectly own the CEF’s portfolio at a discount. Also, many ETFs and CEFs can do things like hedge or write options which would be more than a full time job for an individual.

Brad Schumann: Sometimes I like to just put money into an ETF when I’m being indecisive about individual picks

Ralf Lai: i use ETF to monitor the performance of particular sector

Iam Distinque: ETFs are great for tracking money flow. I have a % change chart of the majors ETFs against the SPX. Immediately shows who have money flowing in, who has money flowing out and who is flat. Against that I have a % change chart for the top 10-15 securities of each ETF. Then just pick the best of the best and/or the worst of the worst.?

Ralf Lai: Relative Rotation Graph by Bloomberg, is another source

Milos Markovic: Didn’t get this. Could you explain better please?

Iam Distinque: I use the SPDR sector ETFs mostly. I plot a comparison chart where the SPX is the base and it with all the other ETFs are plotted against the base from a fixed point in time. (i.e. 1 mo, 6 mo, 1 yr). This creates a chart that vacillates over/below a…See more

Iam Distinque: For ToS here is a share link: http://tos.mx/hBGhrk

Flexible grid_20180508
tos.mx

Thomas Brandt: Thanks for posting this Iam, its a great resource. Never thought of using the ETFs like this. I loaded it into my TOS and will be consulting when checking sectors…. now i just have to memorize which sectors match those XL_ !

Iam Distinque: I have a label script. Just moved to a new box and it is one of many I forgot to bring. Will post once I grab them. A couple of comments, I only check once a week over the weekend. Setting up the week’s game plan. I am on options trader. The 30 d…See more

Milos Markovic: Hey guys I have no idea what are you talking about ?. I guess this is some day trading thing. I’m more in standard basic analysis PE, eps, cash flow and so on…