I have some money in the iShares S&P500 on FreeTrade. I looked at the costs/ charges document today and noticed this, can anyone explain to me what these charges are and when it would be taken as I’m quite confused about these extra costs? Thanks!
These are the costs that the ETF it’s self has. Transaction costs are related to the various costs of acquiring and disposing of assets.
If I remember right it’s also backwards looking. It’s an indication of what the costs have been. Not what they will be. It could be higher or lower in the future.
The cost is already factored in as well, you don’t pay it separately
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Thanks! When you say it’s factored in already, does that mean that let’s say hypothetically my investment had no growth or loss in the next 5 years at all, would it’s value fall by the cost in the screenshot above or would it maintain the amount I’ve put in?
I don’t understand how it’s charged, is there a document showing the ETFs flat fee or that they take a percentage etc? Shouldn’t that extra fee from the ETF itself be made more obvious?
Thanks!
The ETF provider already takes that money from the fund to pay for explicit costs associated with the fund.
Any growth or loss you see from your point of view already includes any costs associated with the fund built in.
Transaction costs also include slippage, which is the difference between what they pay and the market value. That’s implicit costs.
The transaction cost just includes a all factors relating to the transactions.
These aren’t flat fees. It’s backwards looking, so the document is telling you what the transaction costs were last year. ETF providers are required to calculate these costs yearly I believe for the previous year.
That’s the purpose of the document. It gets even more confusing when you reason you can actually get negative transaction costs. This is usually because the calculation of the price paid vs the market price in combination with everything else results in a negative amount. You do not receive extra money from this. It just means they got a more favourable or worse price compared to the market price.
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OK, so, similarly confused here… if I understand this correctly, these EFT charges/costs/fees are included in whatever the fund is doing, and we won’t suddenly be landed with an unexpected bill somewhere down the line?
The weird ones are where I find ETFs with negative costs - what’s going on there?!
Yes. You don’t see it anywhere.
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It’s explained by Cameron here:
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