FAQs

To analyze Fund Flows for a group of ETFs, you must input the ETF tickers of the funds you wish to analyze. Next, select a date range and a time interval for your analysis. Click the Submit button and you will see a breakdown of the Fund Flows according to your specifications, as well as an aggregate figure that totals the net flows for the period specified.

Fund Flow data for a given day typically is not available until the following day. Unfortunately, we do not have data that provides visibility to intraday fund flows.

Fund Flows can provide insights into investor sentiment across all aspects of the investment world. Fund flows can show how investors are positioning their investments across specific asset classes and strategies, and how investor preferences have changed over time.

Shares in an ETF may not be created or redeemed on a daily basis. It is normal to see ETFs that may have no inflows or outflows for an extended period of time.

Fund Flows show how investors are moving money in and out of ETFs. Inflows occur when new shares are created in an ETF, increasing the total assets of the fund. Outflows occur when ETF shares are redeemed, decreasing the total assets of the fund.

The ETF Fund Flows tool gives you the ability to analyze the inflows and outflows of specific ETFs.

Valurank gives the user a measure of where their portfolio stands from the perspective of risk vs reward. A high ValuRank means that the portfolio provides exceptional returns with low volatility compared to other ETFs and portfolios in the same asset class ie equity or fixed income. Valurank is expressed as a percentile metric ie. a score of 79 would mean that 79% of Portfolios and ETFs had a lower risk to reward ratio i.e Sharpe or Sortino.

etf.com publishes a variety of ETF and underlying stocks related news and insights every day, wherein those articles are tagged with the tickers that maybe mentioned on the content. In MyDashboard, the articles related to the tickers in the users portfolio are listed in order of recency so that the user can view this content in context of portfolio performance.

Once a portfolio is built, all aspects of a portfolio including the performance, related news, analytical tools and scores are available in the portfolio's dedicated MyDashboard page

MyDashboard offers a custom page for each portfolio. By selecting more tickers into the portfolio, users can track related performance changes of the portfolio including movement of the Portfolio's Valurank metric. My dashboard also tunes news and etf.com tools to the specific tickers in your portfolio to enable further analysis

MyDashboard news stories are related to tickers in the users portfolio. However, The contributor section lists recent content by writers that the user is following.

Both methods of portfolio construction are supported by etf.com. In the Portfolio builder, the tickers and weights/ shares can be added one at a time. If only weights are used, the portfolio stats will not include total value and actual gains.

etf.com portfolio builder supports inclusion of stock tickers and ETF tickers. Stock tickers and ETFs can belong to a variety of asset classes - enter the ticker name in portfolio builder to find it for inclusion. A portfolio may contain a mix of stocks and ETF.

Once a portfolio is created, the user can edit portfolio to delete tickers or they can select "add" to include additional tickers

This setting is required for etf.com's Valurank computation. Depending on the portfolio type, the "universe" of assets that its performance is compared to is modified ie. growth oriented or risk averse.

etf.com portfolio feature is particularly suited for portfolios that include a mix of ETFs and other stock tickers, providing typical portfolio metrics but also a deep dive into ETF holdings and comparative rating to ETFs and ETF portfolios

etf.com's portfolio capability enables investors to store and track their real or target holdings. ETF advisors use this feature to model portfolios and understand their performance characteristics

Users may build a portfolio using portfolio ticker weights or by entering #shares and purchase price. Users may also convert their existing watchlists to portfolios

Once a portfolio is built, all aspects of a portfolio including the performance, related news, analytical tools and scores are available in the portfolio's dedicated MyDashboard page

Valurank enables portfolio owners to understand the risk vs reward score of their portfolios consisting of stock tickers and/ or ETFs, compared to other ETFs or User portfolios in the same asset class. This is an easy way for Investors to understand the strength of their holdings although there are many more considerations in evaluating ETFs includings costs, liquidity, diversification etc.

Valurank can either be computed to compare holdings to other ETFs or to other ETFs and other Portfolios- this is a choice the user can make.

Valurank is a rank metric built upon either a sortino or a sharpe ratio depending on whether the priority is growth (equity portfolios) or low risk (fixed income). For equity portfolios only negative volatility is considered risk, whereas for low risk strategy, all volatility is included in risk computation.

Valurank is computed on a daily basis. The user can track Valurank on the MyDashboard page of their portfolios as a current day data point. On the Valurank page, the user can track Valurank as a time series and compare Valurank with that of other portfolios they own.

Markets Monitor provides financial advisors/investors a broad view on how various asset classes are relatively performing, including market indices, equity sectors, global markets, fixed income, commodities and aggregate classifications, e.g., Equity Factors. As an investor in ETFs in particular, I want to be able to uncover opportunities in these markets and directly invest in those using ETFs as a liquid and investable proxy of purposeful groupings of assets. 

The Markets Monitor page represents the overall market trends by including a representative ticker within each asset subclass. The ticker selected to represent each asset subclass is typically the one that best mirrors the market index of the subclass and has the highest AUM.

On Markets Monitor, a user may observe uptrends and downtrends in each market subclass over selectable periods of time. A user may choose to look at articles related to these assets to understand the trends better, or to augment/modify their ETF portfolio/models to exploit such trends. by adding tickers to portfolio. A user could also look at other ETFs in the same asset type by exploring further in the Screener tool.

The Markets Monitor summary page provides a top-level snapshot of each market, e.g., for Global Markets, there are summary categories: broad, emerging, frontier, as well as some specific market tickers. In the corresponding Drill Down page, all major markets in each continent are covered. The Drill Down page also provides color-coded, performance ranking of losers and gainers within each sub-class within the Drill down Asset class. 

News selections on this page pertain to the tickers selected on this page and display on the performance plot. If no tickers are selected, then News articles may relate to all the listed tickers. Once selections are made, the content sorts first to the ticker selections that are made.

Yes, once selections are made, click "Save" above the performance chart. When you return to the page in future sessions, these selections will be displayed by default. To save selections, the user must be registered and logged in. If changes are made and "Save" is clicked again, then the new selections will become the session default.

The Markets Movers page provides the user with insight into what segments of the overall financial markets have moved the most on the current day, using the lens of representative ETFs. Further, it visually depicts the movers over recent time versus those that have moved the most on the current day, thereby displaying sustained trends versus today's movers.

The two-axis plot on this page has 30-Day Returns % on the X axis and 1-Day Returns % on the Y axis. Therefore, the top right and bottom left would indicate sustained a positive or negative trend respectively, whereas the bottom right and top left would indicate movement against recent patterns. 

The current patterns shown in Market Mover help investors understand current-day and near-term market movements that they want to explore further using the various contextual news insights and tools on etf.com that can faciliate further research. The user may also use these insights to augment/modify their portfolios/models.

The sector filters enable the Market Movers user to further subset the movers by S&P Industrial sectors, to look at movements within one or more individual sectors separately, distinguished by color coding.

News selections on the Market Movers page relate to the Movers identified on this page based on current-day market data. When filters are applied toward specific market sectors, the News stories re-sort to prioritize the filtered sectors. 

An ETF, or "exchange-traded fund," is a pooled investment security like a mutual fund but it trades on an exchange like a stock. Most ETFs passively track a benchmark index, such as the S&P 500, while some are actively managed.

ETFs track a benchmark index by holding all the securities in the index in equal proportion to their weighting in the index. Some ETFs track the price movement of a specific asset or commodity. To track price movement, these ETFs often invest in derivatives or futures contracts, but they may hold a physical asset, such as gold, by storing it in a vault.

How an ETF is taxed depends primarily on the fund’s underlying holdings and the form of distributions paid to shareholders. For example, a dividend ETF will be taxed on the dividends distributed. Investors may also incur capital gains tax on the profit earned from selling an ETF. The ultimate tax paid may also depend on the shareholder’s tax bracket.

Many ETFs pay dividends, and some track a dividend index and hold only dividend-paying stocks. The way it works is the ETF collects the dividends and distributes them to the fund’s shareholders, usually on a periodic basis, such as quarterly. Investors may choose to receive the dividends, or they may reinvest the dividends to buy more shares of the ETF.

Most ETFs are structured as open-end funds, which typically provide investors with exposure to the main investment asset classes, such as stocks and bonds. ETFs may also be structured as unit investment trusts, grantor trusts or limited partnerships.

Expressed as a percentage, an expense ratio tells an investor how much they’ll pay over the course of a year to own a mutual fund or an ETF. These expenses pay for costs associated with fund operation, such as marketing, advertising and management of the fund portfolio.

ETF fees are operational expenses that are deducted from the fund assets. Therefore, from the investor’s perspective, ETF fees are not directly paid like a monthly bill. Instead, they are reflected in a fund’s net return. For example, if an ETF expense ratio is 0.10%, and the total return before fees is 9.00%, the net return to the investor is 8.90%.

The primary risk associated with investing in ETFs is market risk, which is the risk that adverse market conditions can cause a decline in the price of the fund. The specific degree of market risk with ETFs depends primarily on the underlying assets that they track. For example, a stock ETF will generally have more market risk than a bond ETF.

The performance data presented is the annualized total return for time periods longer than one year.

Analyzing ETF holdings requires different metrics depending on the asset class. For example, an investor evaluating an equity ETF may be interested in valuation ratios, whereas a fixed income investor focusing on a bond ETF may focus on credit ratings. The Comparison Tool considers the asset class of the ETFs being compared when generating metrics for comparison to give you the best comparison possible.

There is a Plus (+) button next to the ETF ticker at the top of the comparison page. Selecting the Plus button will take you to a prompt where you can select which portfolio will add the ETF to its holdings.

The Compare ETFs page currently supports comparisons between two ETFs only. If you would like to compare more ETFs side-by-side, it is possible via the ETF Screener.

ETFs will be compared using metrics related to performance, cost, holdings and ESG.

You can compare two ETFs across a variety of metrics on our Compare ETFs page. This page includes popular comparisons among investors and gives you the option to input two specific ETFs for comparison.

To add an ETF from the screener to your portfolio, first you must select the checkbox next to the ETF ticker. Then click the "Add To Portfolio" button in the top right of the results table. This will take you to a prompt where you can select which portfolio will add the ETF to its holdings.

The FactSet ETF Classification guide can be viewed at this link.

The left-hand side of the ETF Screener page includes the screener's filtering criteria. Here you can select specific attributes of an ETF that are of interest to you (asset class, geographic focus, expense ratio, performance, etc.) to narrow the list of ETFs for your search. The results table to the right of the filtering criteria includes key metrics for the ETFs that have passed the screener. These metrics include Performance, Fund Flows, ESG details and more.

Yes, all users that have created an account and signed in are able to save their screeners. The button to save a screener is located in the top right of the results table.

The ETF Screener gives you the ability to filter the U.S. ETF universe according to your preferences to find the ETF that best suits your investment needs and goals.