An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is an open-ended fund or unit investment trust that is registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and traded by investors on a registered national securities exchange. The ETF issues shares or trust receipts giving the owner of the shares an economic interest in the fund assets. An index based ETF seeks to track the performance of an index by holding in its portfolio either the contents of the index or a representative sample of the securities in the index. The number of shares outstanding in an ETF is not fixed, hence they are often called "open-ended" exchange traded funds or ETF for short.

The issuer of an ETF is the Trust or Register Investment Company and is commonly called the "fund" or the issuer. The fund’s investment objective, defined in the prospectus, will be to closely track the performance of a specified index or defined broad asset class. To achieve this objective, the fund will act according to the instructions provided by the investment advisor and/or the sponsor. The investment advisor or the sponsor will direct the fund to add and/or remove securities from the portfolio based on changes in the index.

Since an ETF will continuously offer new shares for sale to the market place, there is a process in place to create those shares. To do this without disrupting the balance between supply and demand in the market place, the creation and redemption process is a transfer of shares "in- kind". The new shares are typically created in large blocks, called creation units. The transfer or creation process, occurs at the end of the day at the fund’s Net Asset Value (NAV). For example, an Authorized Participant will contact the fund administrator and request a creation unit of the ETF and in return the Authorized Participant will deliver to the fund administrator the specified basket of securities that represent the fund’s portfolio.

An ETF is a security that is based on the prices of a group of securities it seeks to replicate. The ETF fund sponsor makes available to investors the Indicative Optimized Portfolio Value (IOPV) of the ETF. This value is intended to approximate the value of the securities held in the portfolio by the ETF fund manager and should closely represent the value of the fund throughout the day. NYSE Arca, as the primary listing exchange for an ETF, will disseminate the IOPV value for each primary listed ETF throughout the trading day to the Consolidated Tape Association (CTA).

Below is a list of the ETFs for which NYSE Arca maintains the primary listing and the associated tickers:

Click here to download the IOPV values...