ETFs. Now, ETF stands for Exchange Traded Funds and they're kind of a hybrid between a closed-end and an open-ended mutual fund. Now, ETFs have grown in popularity and in assets over the last 10 to 15 years. Currently, they're about 1800 ETFs and it's growing on a daily basis in the US with a net asset value of over 3 trillion dollars. So while it's not as big as a mutual fund industry, the level of growth over the last 10 to 15 years has been superior. Now, ETFs, they trade intraday like closed ended mutual funds so they do not just trade at the end of the day, you can trade it at any point while the market is open. Investors, again, just like closed end funds, they buy and sell shares with each other and not the ETF company or sponsor. Now, despite being able to trade shares of an ETF intraday like a closed ended mutual funds, ETFs tend to track the net asset value a lot closer than closed ended mutual funds due to the redemption procedure. And the last point here is that ETFs has typically been index funds. Now, that has changed recently with a lot more active managers coming into the ETF space. But historically, a key difference between closed ended mutual funds and ETFs were that closed ended funds were predominantly actively managed stock or bond funds. Whereas, ETFs were typically passive index instruments. Now let's take a look at some other differences between ETFs and mutual funds. First of all, transaction costs. ETFs tend to have lower expense ratios but you do incur brokerage costs when trading in and outta ETFs. Conversely, a mutual fund, you could be trading with the mutual fund company directly, and in a lot of cases it would be with minimal or no trading costs. Trading. ETFs can be traded intraday as we discussed on a few occasions but they can also be shorted and there are options for some of the more widely held ETFs in the marketplace. Lastly, tax implications. And the main benefit of ETFs here is that there's generally less taxable gain distributions for ETFs given their unique redemption process and that's because with ETFs, generally investors are trading with themselves and there's no impact or sale of underlying holdings within the ETF.