Vanguard Brings Unrivaled Access To ETFs With Launch Of Industry’s Largest Commission-Free Platform

Ted

FYI: Vanguard, the leader in low-cost investing, today launched the largest suite of commission-free ETFs available to investors.1 As announced in early July, Vanguard is offering commission-free online transactions on approximately 90% of all ETFs—nearly 1,800 of the roughly 2,000 ETFs currently trading on the major exchanges. Vanguard has excluded inverse and leveraged ETFs due to their highly speculative nature.
Regards,
Ted
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/news/Press-Release-Vanguard-Launches-Commission-Free-ETFs-082118.html

msf

The full list of commission-free ETFs (32 pages of the pdf; 4 pages of TF funds):
https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/etfcfl.pdf

davidrmoran

Outdone by ML? (Perhaps minimum presence requirements.) And will Vanguard let you buy CAPE for free?

msf

Yes, Vanguard will sell CAPE to some of its investors for free (minimum presence requirement).

Vanguard won't sell CAPE for free to all of its investors. CAPE is not an ETF but an ETN, and thus not part of the "commission-free ETF" program above. But at least all investors can buy it at VBS, for $7 or less.

Merrill Edge (ME) investors can't buy an ETN at any price, not even Merrill Lynch's own Elements ETNs.

davidrmoran

I am told by my ML handholder that etn status is not the reason, but its use of derivatives. Or something like that.

$7 is good; Fido is $5, if I am reading correctly; dunno why I balk, sez the guy who drives 3 miles to save $3 on scotch.

That Elements link is the single funniest piece of financial writing I have read in very many months.

But these are highly comical too, directly or indirectly.

https://www.etf.com/sections/blog/23314-the-worst-etf-in-the-world.html

https://www.elementsetn.com/ElementsETNUI/SPECTRUM-U.S.-ETN.aspx

Up a dime today. $4M in assets, sez M*. Strategy almost CAPE-like, har.

Sven

@msf, Thank you for Vanguard's complete list - very extensive.

msf

"I am told by my ML handholder that etn status is not the reason, but its use of derivatives. Or something like that. "

There's that bogeyman, "derivatives". There are many people, myself included, who would say that ETNs are themselves intrinsically derivatives. Their values are derived from something else and there's nothing requiring an issuer to hold that "something else". See, e.g. this old (2010) page:
https://www.invest-faq.com/articles/deriv-exch-trade-note.html

Though others like the SEC don't consider ETNs automatically to be derivatives:

"Funds that are constrained by the limits of the proposed rule may also respond to incentives to gain market exposure with exchange-traded notes (ETNs) instead of derivatives."
https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-24-15/s72415-85.pdf

Let's test ME's explanation. Here's a list purporting to include all ETNs. Most ETNs are either leveraged, or inverse, or based on commodities or futures, which would be derivatives under any definition (they don't hold actual wheat, for example).
https://www.firstbridgedata.com/page/list-of-etns-exchangetraded

We can look at ETNs that track the Alerian MLP index. Excluding leveraged ones, there's AMJ and AMU (also AMUB, which is just a second series of AMU). On the ETF side, there's AMLP, which does actually hold the component securities.
http://etfdb.com/etfdb-category/mlps/

Merrill Edge won't trade any of the ETNs, but is happy to sell you AMLP. It doesn't appear to be concerned about the index being tracked, only that the securities are ETNs rather than ETFs.

See if you can provide a counter example - ask Merrill Edge to name a single ETN that they'll sell you. If the handholder will only tell you yes or no for ETNs you explicitly name, walk through the whole list (above) of ETNs. I don't expect a single "yes".

davidrmoran

She knows nothing independently, is just assigned to see that the new HNW (ha) transferrer-in is happy and 'why don't I do the same for the rest of my Fido holdings'. I try to speak with her as little as possible, though she always says she will relay my complaints and suggestions. I got my $1k bonus already for the transfer. The CAPE "reason" she was reciting to me was bullshit, sure, and upon reflection unsurprising.
I may email them the questions / examples you suggest, but those C/S responses are no good either. Fido people at least are frank, ime.

Great etn list. So Barclays doesn't physically hold livestock, huh. I wonder who uses 3x inverse natgas.