Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About HOLDRs

A microwave oven is simple until you try to do anything more than heat up a frozen burrito. The same goes for HOLDRs, the exchange-traded baskets developed by Merrill Lynch.

On the surface, these products seem perfectly simple. They are fixed baskets of 20 stocks that trade on the American Stock Exchange. But when you decide to put your money down, you'll need to know the nuances and twists. Like any financial product, they have quirks.

Although these products have been extremely popular, the facts are sparse. Even on the great wide Internet, information is hard to come by. ...