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Book: Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)) :: Book
Date: Wednesday, 03 December, 2008 :: 20:56
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Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))
List Price: USD $24.99
from USD $9.59
Product Group: book
Manufacturer: For Dummies
Studio: For Dummies
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Editorial Review: Product Description
It seems like every week Wall Street comes up with some new, exotic investment idea that puts your money at risk. Thankfully, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are less volatile than individual stocks, cheaper than most mutual funds, and subject to minimal taxation. But how do you use this wonderful product to diversify your investments in today?s fast-growing and ever-changing market? Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies shows you in plain English how to weigh your options and pick the exchange-traded fund that?s right for you. It tells you everything you need to know about building a lean, mean portfolio and optimizing your profits. This hands-on guide will give you the power to use ETFs to: - Create the stock (equity) side of your portfolio
- Handle risk control, diversification, and modern portfolio theory
- Manage small, large, sector, and international investments
- Add bonds, REITs, and other ETFs
- Invest smartly in precious metals
- Work non-ETFs into your investment mix
- Revamp your portfolio to fit life changes
- Fund your retirement years
In addition, this book covers commonly asked questions about ETFs and mistakes that many investors, even the experienced ones, make. It provides forecasts of the future for ETFs and personal spending and also provides a complete list of ETFs and Web resources to assist your investment. With Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies, you?ll soon discover what makes ETFs the hottest investment on the market!
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Reviews:
Average Customer Review: 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Summary: Solid Read
Date: 2008-02-05 - 
Comment: PROS
- enjoyable writing style, easy read.
- author's knowledge.
- author provides specific reviews of many ETFs.
- much additional information on financial management, beyond ETFs.
CONS
- the author carefully builds a solid case for buying ETFs, but does not adequately address why someone would buy an EFT over a low cost index fund held in a retirement account.
- for some readers (like me), there needs to be more technical discussion of how ETFs are structured and how they operate, as opposed to describing ETFs merely by their benefits and roles in a portfolio.
- the author's case for ETFs does not address one serious drawback of ETFs: difficulty of conducting automatic dollar cost averaging (DCA); of course, this is possible to do transaction-fee-free (or nearly so) at some brokerages, but ETFs require trading commissions and you have to conduct DCA yourself, as brokerage typically will not buy stocks (or ETFs) on an automatic schedule.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Summary: Beautifully understandable introduction to ETFs
Date: 2008-01-13 - 
Comment: I've been in the ETF 'game' for awhile now and have read quite a number of books on investings, ETFs, finance, and the whole lot. As always, the Dummy series does an excellent job in explaining what might be complicated for some folks in an understandable and fun way. The author does a superb job with cutting through the bull of the bear n' bull pundits and giving you very real and very good advice. This should be your first book to read if you are considering ETFs - then you can take on more detailed and convoluted volumes. Good job!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Summary: etf for dummies
Date: 2007-12-21 -
Comment: excellent book for people who know less than nothing about exchange traded funds. I found it very helpful with one or two areas not covered by this book. It does give you the basics to understand books that a weightier on the subject.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Summary: Excellent intermediate level read
Date: 2007-04-06 -
Comment: Mr. Wild is an entertaining writer, who breaks down what is appropriate for small, medium and wealth investors. My only wish is his chapter on sample portfolios were more detailed. I would have liked to see sample portfolios optimized for cost, risk tolerance, equity only and for those nearing and in retirement. Vanguard should consider giving away this book out to anyone opening an account with them, given how much he repeatedly triumphs Vanguard's nearly universal low fees!
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
Summary: Highly Recommended Introductory Guide to ETFs
Date: 2007-03-17 -
Comment: Reading this 338-page book will make you a very intelligent ETF investor. Whether or not you will be successful depends on you. Russell Wild, the author, provides a solid, entertaining, and comprehensive analysis of ETFs - the latest Wall Street craze. ETFs have grown to over $400 billion in assets with over 438 ETFs in existence.
Wild begins with the history of ETFs. Then he compares ETFs to stocks and mutual funds including the tax implications of selling ETFs, and the differences in annual expense ratios. A comparison to closed-end funds would have also been helpful, since many investors are not familiar with that useful investment category.
One chapter introduces the need to open a brokerage account to buy and sell ETFs, and then focuses on the major firms offering them. Next, the author delves into the riskiness of ETFs, how risk is measured, and discusses beta and correlation. Many investors will learn a great deal about risk in this chapter, which they often neglect in making investment decisions.
The author has multiple chapters on the basic ETFs, including large and small caps focusing separately on value and growth, and then reviews sector ETFs, REIT ETFs, and commodity ETFs.
In one of the closing chapters, Wild provides sample ETFs portfolios for different risk levels, suggest that buy-and-hold is the way to go, and then provides a few exceptions to that approach. He also includes a chapter on using ETFs in retirement plans, as well as has chapters on the 10 most common questions about ETFs, and the 10 biggest mistakes investors make.
Wild includes a 12-page appendix from www.etfguide.com that contains a listing of 300 ETFs by broad categories, their name, ticker symbol, expense ratio and exchange. Since there are now 438 ETFs, this appendix is out-of-date and useless, wasting twelve pages. The reader can go directly to the website to get the latest listings.
Another appendix contains a cross section of ETF and other useful websites. Another excellent website to add to his list is www.etfscreen.com, which provides current short-term performance data after each day's market close on all the ETFs. The 6-page glossary of terms and the 14-page index all provide helpful information
In conclusion, this is simply the best introductory book on ETFs. The author provides many useful tables, charts and diagrams to bring home his key points. For those investors looking to actively trade or invest in ETFs, or are searching for profitable back-tested strategies the next book they should buy after this one is Marvin Appel's Investing With Exchange-Traded Funds Made Easy (see my review of this book on AMAZON). If investors/traders want to use a simple relative strength approach, then they should consider David Vomund's ETF Trading Strategies Revealed paperback recently released.
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