Wouldn’t it be nice to get genuinely independent, professional advice about your investments for free once in a while?
Well, on June 10th at 12.30pm (lunchtime for most of us) you have the opportunity to speak to experts about ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) and find out what they are, what kind of products they invest in and which are the best for you.
It’s being run, for free, through my website, MoneyMagpie.com, in order to help both new and experienced investors get into these cheap and flexible funds which will grow your wealth and help you spread your money across all manner of products and regions.
There are 60,000 ETFs globally and they trade on 60 exchanges. Currently around $2trillion are invested in ETFs and the number is growing every year, because more and more investors are realising how handy ETFs are and how much better value they are than funds that are run by expensive teams of people.
There are also more and more companies producing ETFs and they’re getting more creative about what they track. New ETFs track indexes, countries, regions, bonds, commodities and more, and they do it with low fees and often in a more transparent way than ordinary funds do.
On the whole ETFs are compiled by computer programmes – nice quiet creatures that just get on with the job in hand, don’t ask for raises or bonuses at Christmas and just do what they are told.
So the charges for ETFs can be as low as 0.03 percent but generally hover around 0.5-7 percent. ETFs are considered to be relatively low-risk investments because they’re low-cost and because they spread your money over a lot of shares or other types of assets (bonds, gold, oil etc) which means your cash is automatically “diversified” (i.e. spread about).
The more your money is diversified, the safer it is as when one element drops down you have the other investments to fall back on.
One downside of ETFs – and frankly of any automated fund like an index-tracking fund – is that as they live by an index, they can die by an index.
So, if you have money in an S&P 500 ETF that tracks the (yes you guessed it) S&P 500 in America, if it suddenly drops down and stays down, your ETF will drop with it.
Whereas, in theory at least, if you have money in an actively managed fund where real human beings are making decisions, they can often move your money quickly into other shares in order to keep the fund healthy.
These are just a few of the aspects of ETFs that make them interesting to any investors, but particularly to those that are just starting in their investment journey.
So to find out the best ETFs for your needs and how to put money into them, come to my FREE webinar at 12.30pm on Monday 10th June. Sign up for free here. See what I have to say about it here too.
