When Liquidity Matters in ETFs

If you are an investment manager and need a large quantity, you have the luxury of buying small pieces of your total position throughout the day and giving all clients an average price, which is how I execute most across-the-board trades.

But for anyone, individual or professional, looking for a short-term trade, I'd say that 3-4 cents is much more likely to be an obstacle. While there is probably liquidity to execute the order without moving the market up a lot, missing 4 cents coming and going on a $25 ETF to be held for just a few days probably would deter me from lesser-traded ETFs.

None of this is really an issue for more popular ETFs such as the Oil Services HOLDRs(OIH Quote) or the iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund(IWM Quote).

If this is an issue important to you, you probably should experiment to see which ETFs offer what I'll call friendlier treatment for reasonable limit orders.

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Please note that due to factors including low market capitalization and/or insufficient public float, we consider iShares S&P Global Telecommunications Sector Index Fund, WisdomTree International Communications Sector Fund and WisdomTree International Energy Sector Fund to be small-cap stocks. You should be aware that such stocks are subject to more risk than stocks of larger companies, including greater volatility, lower liquidity and less publicly available information, and that postings such as this one can have an effect on their stock prices.