Basics of ETFs and asset allocation with ETFs with Siddharth Srivastava

Index funds and ETFs are steading becoming popular among Indian investors as they realize the importance of costs and the fact that fund managers generating alpha is hard. In the past year or so, we've discussed index funds and the merits of passive investing in multiple conversations but we haven't spoken much about Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

The folks at Mirae are betting big on ETFs and they are launching a fund of fund (FOF) that invests in Nifty 50, Nifty Next 50, and Nifty midcap 150 ETF. This has the 2 benefits of equity taxation for the FOF and also the rebalancing inside the FOF is tax-free. So we caught up with Siddharth Srivastava, the head of ETF products at Mirae Asset India to talk about all things ETFs, index funds, and Mirae's new fund offering.

In this conversation we talk about:

1. What an ETF is, how does it work and how is it different from an index mutual fund
2. The global and Indian ETF landscape
3. His thought on why ETFs aren't popular among retail investors
4. Liquidity issues in ETFs and what should investors do when buying and selling ETFs
5. Why Mirae is launching index ETFs when it is known for its active funds
6. What makes the new Mirae Asset Equity Allocator Fund of Fund unique and it's advantages
7. His thought son how investors can use Mirae Asset Equity Allocator Fund of Fund in a portfolio
8. Investing in this ETF vs buying the ETFs individually
9. His personal investing philosophy and his investing lessons
10. His favourite books

Please enjoy this conversation with Siddharth of Mirae.

We would love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions on the podcast. Please do tweet your thoughts @CoinbyZerodha. You can also post your question on ETFs and mutual funds here on TradingQnA.