By Greg Peel

Exchange traded funds (ETF) have now been the fastest growing investment product globally in the past decade and continue to be so. To learn the basics of ETFs, readers are directed towards articles from FNArena's SMSFundamentals series: Active, Passive And ETFs; Exchange Traded Funds Part II; and Learn More About ETFs.

The past decade has also seen rapid growth in commodity ETFs which provide exposure to commodity prices through stock exchange listed products. These products are also called exchange-traded commodities (ETC) and together with equity, fixed income, cash and currency ETFs the complete set is now known collectively as exchange traded products (ETP). It all gets a bit confusing, so I just prefer to call them all ETFs.