By Andrew A. Bogan, Ph.D., Brendan Connor, and Elizabeth C. Bogan, Ph.D.
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Like many innovations in finance that emerge from nowhere to explode in popularity with unknown consequences, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have gone from obscurity when they were first invented in 1993 to making up more than half of all the daily trading volume on American stock exchanges today. They also made up 70% of all the canceled trades during the Flash Crash on May 6, despite representing just 11% of listed securities in the United States, suggesting that ETFs remain poorly understood by both investors and regulators. Read more