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There are currently more than 970 ETFs and exchange-traded notes (close cousins of ETFs) available in the U.S., with many more listed overseas. Through ETFs, investors can gain access to almost any asset class or sector they could ever want, including some that were previously off-limits, like commodities, emerging markets and more. Within each category, there are hundreds of flavors.
For equities alone, you have funds targeting U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, emerging market stocks, single-country stocks, stock sectors, subsectors or even special investment themes, like infrastructure firms or water companies.
Within fixed income, investors can own broad-based U.S. funds, Treasury funds, corporate funds, municipal bonds, TIPS, international bonds, emerging market debt and more. As with equities, you can further slice and dice each of these markets in multiple ways, buying short-, mid- and long-term Treasurys, or focusing on investment-grade or high-yield credits.
In the commodities space there are broad-based funds, funds focused on energy, agriculture, base metals, precious metals and even single commodities like gold, platinum, oil and natural gas. Investors can choose to invest in front-month futures, out-month futures, long/short strategies or even physical commodities in the case of precious metals like gold and silver.
There are also funds designed to provide 200 percent or even 300 percent of the daily return of an index, as well as funds designed to provide -100 percent, -200 percent or -300 percent of daily returns. There are hedge fund replication products, long/short equity products and many, many more.
A complete list of ETFs and a tool designed to help you search for, sort and rank ETFs is available here. You can also try
IndexUniverse's ETF Classification System, the world's first rules-based ETF finder. ECS helps you find all the ETFs competing in different segments of the market.
Best of all: Hundreds more products are in development, with new funds launching almost every day. A complete list of ETFs in registration is available here.
>> NEXT UP: HOW TO USE ETFs IN A PORTFOLIO
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