His take revolves around computers and number crunching, and how an ETF is just a combination of numbers that can be sliced and diced by investing style, by sector, by geography, or by customized construct, for bonds, currencies, commodities, dividends etc.
Cara's take on ETFs: Who needs baseball stats? The world of algorithmic trading lives for the numbers accounting for these ETFs. Mere retail investors lose neurons everyday and cannot hope to keep up.
I love Bill's work, but I would like to see individual investors get a little more credit. We lived with over 11,000 mutual funds at one point and most never performed in line with their benchmarks. Sure, with only 400+ ETFs we have more asset classes, sectors and global regions so investors need tools to help them analyze the pool of ETFs and make intelligent investing decisions.
As long as billions of dollars continue to flow into ETFs, expect more to hit the market. In addition, I think we'll see more industry tools that help you use them wisely.
