This blog post is about the book “Investing in ETFs” written by Russell Wild.

ETFs have grown massively in size in the last decade or so. The AUM for global ETFs is at 14T USD with about 14,000 funds jostling in the overcrowded space. In today’s world, ETFs come in various shapes, sizes and flavors. It can be safely said that we are now seeing there is a beta or combination of beta products for any sort of alpha you can think of. There are single stock ETFs, leveraged ETFs, private credit ETFs launched by StateStreet, KPOP ETFs, a slew of active ETFs that are available besides the regular index based ETFs. Not to mention the ton of money that has flown in to cryptocurrency ETFs this year.

Even though this book was written in 2023 and most of the numbers such as AUM, tracking error, performance stats are a bit dated, the book is a very useful resource for someone looking to invest in ETFs in any part of the world. Even though the book is US centric in its content, the principles laid out in the book are geography agnostic. The author being a financial advisor brings all his wisdom of investing clients over several decades, in to explaining various aspects of ETFs. He never shuns from giving his own take of various ETFs ranging from what he prefers to what he detests.

If you are an investor who wants to figure out this space of investing and may be not ready for a financial advisor(for various reasons) and wants to invest based on a few solid principles, then you should definitely check out this book. In today’s world of electronic trading and brokerage platforms available everywhere, investing in ETFs has become a breeze. It has become imperative for many young people who are just entering the work force or who have spent a few years in the workforce to start planning their investments. With a gamut of ETFs available in various ETF super markets, it is likely that a rookie investor will get confused - Paradox of choice. This book by giving strong recommendation on the ways to choose ETF portfolio can be a good starting point to going about building an ETF portfolio. Worth reading if you are completely new to this world. It is also worth reading for a seasoned investor who has never invested in passive assets. As a reader, you might also get an idea of how a robo advisory firm might work. After all most of the robo advisory firms have ETFs as basic building blocks. However this book is definitely not the right one to read if you are looking for short term ETF strategies or HFT strategies based on ETFs. Even though the book is titled as dummies, the content of the book is useful to a wide variety of retail and institutional investors