Exchange-traded fund in the context of "Hedge fund"

A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. Among these portfolio techniques are short selling and the use of leverage and derivative instruments. In the United States, financial regulations require that hedge funds be marketed only to institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals.

Hedge funds are considered alternative investments. Their ability to use leverage and more complex investment techniques distinguishes them from regulated investment funds available to the retail market, commonly known as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). They are also considered distinct from private equity funds and other similar closed-end funds as hedge funds generally invest in relatively liquid assets and are usually open-ended. This means they typically allow investors to invest and withdraw capital periodically based on the fund's net asset value, whereas private-equity funds generally invest in illiquid assets and return capital only after a number of years. Other than a fund's regulatory status, there are no formal or fixed definitions of fund types, and so there are different views of what can constitute a "hedge fund".

Liquid tradable securities (or LTS) is a generic phrase for a wide range of financial instruments. It often differentiates financial instruments that are easily tradable (or tradeable) as opposed to those that require the permission of the company or a signed document that registers the transfer of securities between two market participants. Another way to look at it is the difference between how a person buys a fund (collective investment scheme) and how they buy a bond or share.

Liquid tradable securities come in many forms and with a wide variety of acronyms. These include stocks and bonds as well as exchange-traded funds, exchange traded commodities, exchange-traded notes (including certificates), REITs, as well as most OTC securities. Note that these do not include Swaps or repurchase agreement (repos), which are contractual arrangements and as such are not tradable. This is a wider definition than the definition of transferable securities under MiFID.

An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to:

• hire professional investment managers, who may offer better returns and more adequate risk management;
• benefit from economies of scale, i.e., lower transaction costs;
• increase the asset diversification to reduce some unsystematic risk.

It remains unclear whether professional active investment managers can reliably enhance risk adjusted returns by an amount that exceeds fees and expenses of investment management. Terminology varies with country but investment funds are often referred to as investment pools, collective investment vehicles, collective investment schemes, managed funds, or simply funds. The regulatory term is undertaking for collective investment in transferable securities, or short collective investment undertaking (cf. Law). An investment fund may be held by the public, such as a mutual fund, exchange-traded fund, special-purpose acquisition company or closed-end fund, or it may be sold only in a private placement, such as a hedge fund or private equity fund. The term also includes specialized vehicles such as collective and common trust funds, which are unique bank-managed funds structured primarily to commingle assets from qualifying pension plans or trusts.

Robo-advisors or robo-advisers are financial advisers that provide personalized financial advice and investment management online with moderate to minimal human intervention. A robo-advisor provides digital financial advice that is personalised based on mathematical rules or algorithms. These algorithms are designed by human financial advisors, investment managers and data scientists, and coded in software by programmers. These algorithms are executed by software and do not require a human advisor to impart financial advice to a client. The software utilizes its algorithms to automatically allocate, manage and optimize clients' assets for either short-run or long-run investment.

Robo-advisors are categorized based on the extent of personalization, discretion, involvement, and human interaction. There are over 100 robo-advisory services. Investment management robo-advice is considered a breakthrough in formerly exclusive wealth management services, bringing services to a broader audience at a lower cost than traditional human advice. Robo-advisors collect financial situation information from the client to determine risk tolerance. Then, robo-advisors allocate a client's assets on the basis of risk preferences and desired target return. While robo-advisors have the capability of allocating client assets in many investment products such as stocks, bonds, futures, commodities, and real estate, the advice is often directed towards exchange-traded funds. Clients can choose between offerings with passive asset allocation techniques or active asset management styles.

Euronext N.V. (short for European New Exchange Technology) is a European bourse that provides trading and post-trade services for a range of financial instruments. It is registered in Amsterdam but its operational headquarters are located in Paris. It operates major stock exchanges in eight countries: France (Euronext Paris), the Netherlands (Euronext Amsterdam), Belgium (Euronext Brussels), Ireland (Euronext Dublin), Portugal (Euronext Lisbon), Italy (Borsa Italiana), Greece (Athens Stock Exchange) and Norway (Euronext Oslo Børs). The present-day Euronext was spun off from the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2014, shortly after ICE's acquisition of NYSE Euronext the year before.

Traded assets include regulated equities, exchange-traded funds (ETF), warrants and certificates, bonds, derivatives, commodities, foreign exchange as well as indices. As of March 2025, Euronext operated nearly 1,800 listed issuers with a market capitalization of approximately €6.3 trillion.

Investment management (sometimes referred to more generally as financial asset management) is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts/mandates or via collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or Real estate investment trusts.

The term investment management is often used to refer to the management of investment funds, most often specializing in private and public equity, real assets, alternative assets, and/or bonds. The more generic term asset management may refer to management of assets not necessarily primarily held for investment purposes.

An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that it can replicate the performance of a specified basket of underlying securities (most often a stock market index or a bond market index).

The main advantage of index funds for investors is that they are difficult to outperform consistently. Academic research has consistently found that most active investors (stock pickers) within a given market segment underperform the relevant index after fees and taxes. Investors also do not need to spend time analyzing various stocks or stock portfolios. Thus investors, academicians, and authors such as Warren Buffett, John C. Bogle, Jack Brennan, Paul Samuelson, Burton Malkiel, David Swensen, Benjamin Graham, Gene Fama, William J. Bernstein, and Andrew Tobias have long been strong proponents of index funds.

A stock fund, or equity fund, is a fund that invests in stocks, also called equity securities. Stock funds can be contrasted with bond funds and money funds. Fund assets are typically mainly in stock, with some amount of cash, which is generally quite small, as opposed to bonds, notes, or other securities. This may be a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. The objective of an equity fund is long-term growth through capital gains, although historically dividends have also been an important source of total return. Specific equity funds may focus on a certain sector of the market or may be geared toward a certain level of risk.

Stock funds can be distinguished by several properties. Funds may have a specific style, for example, value or growth. Funds may invest in solely the securities from one country, or from many countries. Funds may focus on some size of company, that is, small-cap, large-cap, et cetera. Funds which involve some component of stock picking are said to be actively managed, whereas index funds try as well as possible to mirror specific stock market indices.