Risks for European Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck (Banking and Finance), course: Management von Preis-, Zins- und Währungsrisiken, language: English, abstract: Exchange Traded Funds are one of the most successful and promissing innovations in financial markets in the last decades. In contrast to most other finance innovations ETFs are especially beneficial for private investors. Nevertheless some developments took place creating mostly unknown risks for those who decided to invest into them.

This paper should provide a basic understanding of all risks that can be involved in the ETF market. Furthermore, there is a focus on some regulatory rules for such funds. The paper is divided into 4 main parts. First, there is a basic explanation about ETFs and how they work. Second, we show the development of the last few years of the ETF market. The focus of our work lies on the third part which deals with the Risk of ETFs. Risks that are explained are: counterparty, liquidity and leverage risk. Fourth, there is summary of regulations of ETFs which are created by IOSCO and ESMA. Finally, there is a short conclusion which summarizes the whole seminar paper in a few words.