Thanks, everyone, for the responses.

Tad Borek <borekfm[at]pacbell.net> writes:

....
- quote -

I've noticed that I tend to invest lump sums through online discount
brokers, so that probably isn't a problem for me.

- quote -

Thanks. One more thing to look at.

--
--Ed L Cashin PGP public key: http://noserose.net/e/pgp/

Ed L Cashin wrote:
- quote -

Ed,
You should check out the web site for Barclay's iShares, which has all
sorts of info about their ETFs, including IWM: www.ishares.com

Sites with combined data for ETFs have the info as well:
www.etfzone.com
www.etfconnect.com
www.amex.com

These sites provide a lot more info than just expense ratio. You'll find
that for the biggest ETFs that track the most widely followed indices,
the expense ratios are low (and typically very close, when there are
several ETFs available). If you're comparing ETFs to traditional mutual
funds be sure to consider the costs of trading, which can more than make
up any expense difference between, say, a R2000 ETF and a no-load
Small-cap index fund. ETFs are best suited to larger trade sizes and of
course discount brokers or other low-cost ways of trading.

Keep an eye as well on how well the ETF has actually followed the index,
the "tracking error." A few hundredths of a percentage point in expenses
aren't as important as missing the index return by 0.5%. This isn't much
of a factor with an index like the Russell 2000 but some of the ETFs
tracking narrower sectors have tracking errors worth considering.

-Tad

Ed L Cashin <ecashin[at]uga.edu> wrote:

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Yahoo has it under the profile option.

--
Ron

www.etfconnect.com

Ed L Cashin wrote:

- quote -

Hi. I've recently become interested in Exchange-Traded Funds. I
notice that one of the things I should pay attention to as an investor
is the fee.

It looks like the fees are expressed succinctly by the expense ratio.
- quote -

What I can't find is a way to quickly determine the expense ratio for
a given fund. For example, let's say I discover that I want to invest
in an ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 for small cap. I can find the
expense ratio for the ishares Russell 2000 ETF (namely, IWM) at
www.indexfunds.com, but it's a busy, java-laden site, and slow to use.

The places that I usually go for quick lookups, especially
finance.yahoo.com, don't appear to show the expense ratio when I look
up an ETF by its symbol.

I read at a couple places that The NY Times and The Wallstreet Journal
newspapers have the expense ratios for funds. Is there an online
source that is pretty comprehensive and quick to use? Maybe I'm just
missing the expense ratio in the data that fool and yahoo are showing
me?

Thanks!

--
--Ed L Cashin PGP public key: http://noserose.net/e/pgp/