EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

The last two decades witnessed new product innovations in the financial markets across the globe. Designing of new innovative financial products which promise to meet investors’ return expectations as market conditions and global risk appetite change is of a great challenge for the professionals in the financial markets. In recent years, investors are looking for alternative investment vehicles to structured products which gave birth to a new kind of cost and tax-efficient financial instrument, i.e. Exchange Traded Funds popularly known as, ETFs. The investment professionals are always in search of new and sophisticated investment strategies and ETFs can provide them new ways to form building blocks of investment strategies. The present paper studies the growth trend of ETFs and a comparative study of Index based ETFs and Gold based ETFs in India.