ETF Inspector

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”

— Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

This is a tale of two investment types; closed end funds and exchange traded funds.

Closed end funds are mutual funds with a fixed number of shares. They are traded on stock exchanges (like a stock), but composed of a variety of actively managed securities (like a mutual fund). They have a market price (set by the invisible hand of capitalism) as well as a net asset value price (set by the market price of the investments within the fund). The NAV and market price are usually out of sync (ie, selling at a discount or a premium).

Exchange Traded Funds are a little harder to define. Purists, like the SEC, will tell you that they are passively managed funds which track a market index (such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Russell 2000 index, or oil futures). Large blocks of stock (50,000 shares or so) can be converted between ETF shares and shares of the individual stocks in the index. As a result, the NAV and the market price usually stay in sync. Of course, common usage of the word is much less strict.

ETF Inspector's primary interest is dividend yielding, exchange traded, closed end funds.