Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3

Getting to Know the Players

IN THIS CHAPTER

Setting up an account for your ETFs

Meeting the brokerage houses

Finding out who supplies ETFs to the brokers

Introducing the indexers

Distinguishing between the exchanges

I love to shop on Christmas Eve. It’s the only time of the entire year when men — who have finally realized that they need to buy a gift, quickly — outnumber women at the mall. I see these hulking figures, some in bright-orange hunting jackets, walking the fluorescent-lit halls of the mall, looking themselves like scared prey.

Sometimes, when I suggest to a client that they buy a few ETFs for their portfolio, I see the same look of dire trepidation. I need to reassure them that buying ETFs isn’t that difficult. In this chapter, I want to do the same for you.

This chapter is something of a shopper’s guide to ETFs — a mall directory, if you will. I don’t suggest which specific ETFs to buy (I will, I will — but that’s for later chapters). Instead, I show you where ...