ETF (Exchange Traded Fund)

An ETF is a fund whose units trade on a stock exchange throughout the day, the way a single share does. Behind one line in your portfolio sit the underlying holdings of the fund, which can run into the hundreds or thousands. Most ETFs follow a published index, so the manager's job is to hold what the index says rather than to pick winners.

Why it matters

One purchase gives you a spread that would take dozens of orders to assemble yourself, which is why ETFs became the standard building block for long-term portfolios. The trade-off is that a lot of detail disappears inside the wrapper: the fund's running cost is deducted from its value rather than billed to you, the income it receives may be paid out or reinvested internally, and its exposure can overlap heavily with the next ETF you buy. None of that is visible in a broker export, which lists only the fund itself.

How BullBenchmark shows it

We treat a fund as one position with a share count, an average cost and a current value, exactly as we treat a single stock, and we place its return next to the index over the same days. Because the allocation view resolves each fund into sectors, countries and currencies, two trackers that look different by name can turn out to point at much the same companies. The demo portfolio holds two trackers alongside three single stocks, so both cases sit on one page.

Related terms

Accumulating and distributing funds · TER (total expense ratio) · Tracking difference

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