1.)    Costs involved: It is often talked about and is true in the majority of the cases that ETFs are the most cost efficient when expense ratios, management fees and brokerage fees are looked at. However, one should compare ETFs with the comparable mutual funds or indexes before making any decision based on the costs. One other thing to point out is commissions so if you are a trader you should also consider this expense before you start trading ETFs.

2.)    Objective: A Trader should be clear about his objectives and goals before taking an ETF position. One should ask himself/herself on why are they taking ETF position? Is it because they want to gain an exposure to a particular index? Or they want exposure to a particular sector? Are they looking to hedge their current positions? Whatever may be the reason one should figure out what are their objectives before narrowing down to a particular ETF.

3.)    Taxation: Even though ETFs have a tax advantage over other comparable Mutual Funds or other comparable financial instruments when talking about International ETFs it turns out that taxation part is not so gracious.

4.)    Time Line: Trader should think about for how long he/she wants to stay invested in a particular financial instrument because there are pros and cons of different ETFs based on their preferred time horizon.

5.)    Fully Research the ETFs: One of the best aspects about ETFs is the way how information is shared with current and prospective investors. Most updated scripts or securities held by ETFs are being shared openly. So if you are scoping out feasibility, you should start analyzing holdings of all the ETFs being considered by you. If you are looking at an Index ETF you can find out how ETFs have diversified their portfolio, if you are looking at Emerging Market ETFs you can find out which countries this ETF is focusing on, for sector ETF one can analyze the companies these ETFs have invested in.

So consider these aspects before you narrow down to a particular ETF.

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Taking a Put Option Long Position

Just like any other Put Options, ETF Put Option offers a trader to get an exposure or hedge the downward fluctuations in the market. Basically, with put options a trader has a right to sell an ETF at an agreed up-on price (strike price). For example, if a trader goes long on April 150 put he has a right to sell the respective ETF for $150 and a trader can execute this right anytime before April.  Even if the respective ETF trades at $120 trader can sell the ETF at $150.

Taking a Put Option Short Position

When a trader goes short on put options, he gives a right to the other party who has a long position on that put to sell the ETF at the agreed upon strike price at any time before expiration. This is an opposite of having a long position but it is similar to going long on a Call option. For example, if you take a short position on an April 150 put for $20, a trader would want these ETFs to not go below the $150 mark or else he might start incurring a loss on his investments.

Taking a Call Option Long Position

With this type of Call option a trader has a right to buy the agreed quantity and type of Exchange Traded Funds at a certain price (the strike price). So if a trader takes an April 150 Call option Long position, he has a right to buy the respective ETF for $150 anytime before April. Therefore even if the price of the respective ETF climbs to $170 a trader in contract can still buy that ETF for $150.

Taking a Call Option Short Position

As part of this strategy a trader can take a short position so you want the value of ETF to decrease. So if a trader sells April 150 Call option for $12, he will make money if value of the respective ETF never goes above $150.

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Exchange Traded Notes are in a way a combination of bonds and Exchange Traded Funds. They were first issued by Barclays Bank PLC. Generally, notes are type of secured bonds with fixed returns and with principle protection but Exchange Traded Notes are unsecured debts, the returns of these notes depend on how good or how bad the markets perform and there is no protection of investor’s principle how one would have in case of bonds. ETNs can also be stock like bought and sold on the exchange during the trading hours, this feature of ETN matches with that of ETF.

One feature that helps the traders to differentiate between ETN and ETF is that there is a maturity associated with ETNs, so one can trade the ETNs on the exchange or wait for the maturity and get the principle and the gains or losses on that particular day. One aspect that may affect the price of these notes is the credit rating of the issuer of the notes. Therefore, even though there is not much change in the price of index, the value of exchange traded notes may fall due to the drop in the credit rating of the issuer. As per the IRS’ tax guide lines normal tax rates will be applicable on gains from currency ETNs as opposed to ETFs where capital gain taxes are applied. So when ETNs are compared to ETFs from taxation perspective ETNs loses its edge.

There are different types of Exchange Traded Notes available in the market today. However, the four major types of ETNs are Currency ETNs, Commodity ETNs, strategy ETNs and Emerging Market ETNs. Most of you might be aware about three of the above four types but Strategy ETNs. So what are strategy ETNs? Strategy Exchange Traded Notes are associated with the performance of the index. So Index Long and Index Short are examples of strategy ETNs.  Two of the popular ETNs offered by Barclays are iPath CBOE S&P 500 Buy Write Index ETN (BWV) and Barclays GEMS IndexTM ETN (JEM).

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If you do believe in low but steady returns you are definitely going to invest your money in bonds, and for the risky investors out there in the current market situation it makes more sense to rather invest in bonds and play safe. Bond Exchange Traded Funds entirely invest in bonds. Bond ETF possess bonds and it works with different strategies like it may invest in U.S. Treasury bonds, High Yield bonds, from short to long term bonds. Like any other ETFs Bond ETF can also be traded like shares on the exchange during the trading session. Further, like International ETFs there are also bonds available which are being established in foreign countries, traders can take advantage of the rate differences by investing in International Bond ETFs.

Below are some of the popular Bond ETFs available in the market today:

1.) iShares Lehman Aggregate Bond (AGG): most financial securities that invest in bonds considers this ETF as a Benchmark. Based on their investment, these funds are deeply invested in short-term US treasury and government securities.

2.) iShares Lehman Intermediate Government/Credit Bond Fund (GVI): These funds are more inclined towards medium range government securities and credit bonds.

3.) SPDR Lehman High Yield Cond ETF (JNK): These funds are more inclined towards long-term but high interest treasury bonds and government securities.

According to some, Bond ETF is the best option for a complete beginner who has never dealt with trading in securities of any kind, and for the traders who understand the market forces should not invest in bonds. However in the current economic situation I would encourage traders to invest in Bond ETF.

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There are several types of ETFs available in the market for taking advantage of available profit opportunities and to cater to investor’s requirements. Today if trader believes that a particular sector is going to outperform all the other sectors he does not need to take a risk of going all in on a particular company he can instead invest in Sector ETF where investors money is invested in multiple companies in that sector. Likewise there are Commodity ETFs (Which includes precious metals like Gold), Index ETFs (To take advantage of the index volatility), International ETFs (To bank upon emerging markets and their currencies) etc.

If your sentiments are encouraging you to invest in a particular direction and if you choose to invest in ETFs it’s important to find out the ETF List together with their ratings. Today there are many websites where you can find the ETF List namely: Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, MSN’s Money Central, Money Morning, The Street and many more. Different websites have different ways of displaying this data; some websites only show all the available ETFs while at some websites one can view the ETFs based on which bank or financial institution offers them, based on their type, based on their performance and other permutations and combinations.

One also needs to carefully look at the ratings given to these funds. All the websites have their own way of rating these funds like “The Street” has the following categories for rating the ETFs A is Excellent, B is Good, C is Fair, D is Weak, E is Very Weak, + (Plus Sign) rating belongs to the top third of its letter grade, - (Minus Sign) rating belongs to the bottom third of its letter grade.

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Initially when the International ETF was introduced for the traders based in United States they offered Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia in the same fund termed as emerging-markets. Now days you can trade on the metal prices on exchanges in India and China, one can play on political ambiguity in Turkey, business located in small but strong economy like Malaysia thanks to ETFs. The instruments offered today gives strength to the investors to invest in any economy in any part of the world, and all the different verities of products.

International ETFs are increasingly becoming popular with the current financial crisis. As performance of U.S. markets is facing the consequences of recession and since it’s not true for other Asian and Emerging markets traders are investing in ETFs that manage their funds in those markets. In the past if the developed countries were in recession it would hurt the emerging market’s performance as well, however today local businesses in emerging markets are so strong that recession in developed economies have little effect. By investing in International ETF traders can hedge their current positions in the local exchanges or they can just square off their local positions and only invest in emerging markets where today there are more opportunities to earn profits.

Depending on the changing market forces and changing conditions of different economies of the world banks and financial institutions offer funds that would help the investors make profits. Some of the popular International ETFs are as follows: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM) - these funds have given great returns if you look at the change in its Net Asset Value. Their Top 5 Holdings include Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (GDR), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ADR, Itau Unibanco Holding S.A. ADR, Petroleo Brasileiro S.A., Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. ADR. Likewise there is iShares Trust FTSE-Xinhua China 25 Index Fund, iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund, iShares MSCI South Africa Index Fund and many more.

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One of the most popular indexes in the world and the most traded exchange traded funds on the exchange tracks S&P 500. S&P 500 includes stocks of huge publicly owned companies which are traded on either of the two of the largest stock exchanges of United States; NYSE Euronext and NASDAQ OMX.

This index is better known in comparison to whole bunch of indexes managed by Standard & Poor’s which is part of McGraw-Hill.  So as part of S&P ETF, managers invest in the components of this index such as ExxonMobil, Citigroup and General Electric.

Some of the popular funds based on the S&P ETF are as follows:

1.)    SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): This fund broadly tracks S&P 500 Index and invests in the stocks that are listed with the index and would replicate performance of the whole index. So usually the Net Asset Value of this Fund would walk hand in hand with the value of S&P 500’s value.

2.)    SPDR S&P Emerging Asia Pacific ETF: This fund seeks to strongly replicate the total return of S&P Asia Pacific Emerging BMI Index. This index mainly includes companies that are based in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific.

Profunds Ultra S&P 500 ETF (SSO): Day by day banks and financial institutions are finding new ways to lure traders to invest in their fund. One of those innovation includes the fund we are talking about right now, with this fund traders are offered an opportunity to multiply their returns on their investments. SSO offers double the daily return of the S&P 500, so if a trader is confident about the market and as per his sentiments S&P 500 is going to perform well then with this fund he/she has an option of multiply his gains by the use of margin money facility which is widely available these days.

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