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Showing posts from February, 2012

Commission-Free ETFs now available from E*TRADE

E*TRADE recently rolled out commission-free trading of a select group of ETFs from Wisdom Tree, Global-X and Deutsche Bank (db-X funds). No doubt, this is in reaction to a similar move that Charles Schwab made last year and that proved popular with investors and investment advisors alike. In any case, this is good news for investors who happen to have an E*TRADE account. Not only does this reduce trading costs, it provides a wide-ranging set of ETFs that can be used to construct highly diversified portfolios. ETFs include target date funds, currency funds, numerous single-country and global ETFs and an interesting set of style-based ETFs. Examples of the styles available include dividend focused, earnings focused, small cap, mid cap and large cap and combinations of the above. The one drawback is that U.S. sector funds are largely absent. For example, there are no tech ETFs available. The main question, though, is whether these ETFs are good investments. I can say that many of