Financial Times Guide to Exchange Traded Funds and Index Funds, The

David Stevensonis a columnist for the Financial Times Weekend edition and authors the Adventurous Investor section where he writes about everything from investing in Mongolia through to using ETFs in your portfolio. He's also a columnist for the Investors Chronicle (based around his SIPP) and before that was a columnist for Citywire. David writes extensively about ETFs for the FT and has developed a series of Master Portfolios that make use of index tracking funds for the Investors Chronicle.

INTRODUCTION By Matthew Vincent, FT

CHAPTER 1 Investing 2.0 The Revolution Begins

  Decline of the stockpicker and now the decline of active fund manager

  Need to emphasize cost in this low return world

  Investors waking to the reality that they have to diversify especially after bear markets

  The rise of asset class investing, related to but separate from ETfs and index funds

  The rise of the dreaded term beta

CHAPTER 2 A BIT OF THEORY

• Where it all came from academically. The academic revolt
• The efficient markets theory
• The fundamentalists wade in
• The first ETF structures and index funds. The legendary John Bogle and the Vanguard Phenomena

CHAPTER 3 WHAT ARE INDEX OR TRACKER FUNDS?

• Index mutual funds and how they developed from these into these
• Exchange Traded funds, US Style
• European ETFs the rise of the swap
• ETNs in the US and certificates in Europe
• ETCs (commodities) and synthetic ETFs
• The mechanics full replication, partial replication, fully synthetic replication
• Comparing ETFs vs traditional mutual funds vs index mutual funds
• Advantages of different structures and the regulatory structure
• New innovations inverse ETFs, multi-ETF portfolios, actively managed ETFs

CHAPTER 4 THE FIDDLY DETAIL.RISKS, CAVAETS and the INIDICES

• What to watch out for premiums/discounts, tax complications, tracking error, charging (some are expensive the 1% rule)
• Counter Party Risk
• Why the index matters not all indices created equally. Some are too concentrated, carry currency risks, arent very liquid, and some are just pointless

CHAPTER 5 THE RISE OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Guest writer Rob Davies, fund manager of the Munro Fund, a fundamental index fund

• The academic theory surrounding fundamental indexing
• Does it work ? The results so far
• How to implement it via a fund black boxes, dividends and the measures used
• Will it work in the future might value investing be dead ?

CHAPTER 6 BIG THEME INVESTING AND INDEX FUNDS

Guest Writer Stephen Barber, Head of Research at Selftrade

• Momentum investing works and particularly a focus on big themes, big structural changes
• Emerging Markets
• Alternative Assets
• New Energy and Green markets
• Infrastructure and utilities
• Commodities

CHAPTER 7 RUNNING A PORTFOLIO : SOME BASICS

Guest Writer James Norton, Head of investment at Evolve Financial Planning

• A passive portfolio why it matters vs Active
• Buy and Hold
• Asset Allocation explained correlation and diversification
• Inflation
• Income...