What is an exchange-traded fund?

Dr Zhang Weina, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Finance and Research Director at the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship & Philanthropy of NUS Business School explained in the Financial Quotient series that an exchange-­traded fund (ETF) is a tradable financial product that passively tracks the price movement of a portfolio of asset classes, including stocks, bonds, commodities and money markets. An ETF allows for immediate access to a passive diversified portfolio by individual investors who may not have the resources to directly purchase the underlying securities of an index to achieve the benefit of diversification.

• The Sunday Times, 14 May 2017, Invest, pB12