Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 27, 2014?

Article Excerpt

On occasion, we come across an investment that provides a clear example of one or more investment principles. Global X Social Media ETF, which we analyze in this week’s first question, touches on several. ETFs. Exchange traded funds are a relatively recent and benign investment innovation. Unlike many investment innovations, ETFs can cut investor risk and cost. They are a little like conventional open-ended mutual funds, but fees and trading costs are much lower, since they only aim to duplicate the performance of a market index. However, not every index is a good model for investing. You might say that ETFs make it easier and cheaper to pursue a variety of investment ideas, regardless of whether the ideas are good or bad. Theme investing. This particular ETF gives you an easy and low-cost way of investing in stocks associated with the “Social media” investing theme. These stocks are now in the broker/media limelight (see next investment principle). That’s not a particularly good…