If so, kindly state your principal reason for doing so. If not, what is your primary reason for avoiding them?
I've traded *many* of them over the years. Only trade 1 on a daily basis now. Another 4-5 others occasionally. I'd rather duplicate/trade the basket myself. Less games that way. Too many reasons against, suffice it to say, it's like buying retail & selling @ wholesale. Not a profitable long term proposition.
I use them for the more conservative part of my capital. I don't want the hassle of trading futures; limit up/down, notice dates, rolling contracts, etc. I can get access to commodities, currencies, and bonds with ETFs. I can even set a stop and go on vacation for a few days and not worry. Even though ETFs don't track these markets exactly, I don't find that to be a major argument against them. I am holding for 2-12 months if I can catch a good trend, so the tracking error is not very important to me. More and more granular ETFs are appearing, and the liquidity on many of them is rapidly improving. There are at least 100 non-index ETFs now that I consider liquid enough to use.
I use them and I love them. I have a day job and an on-line trading account that is fairly simplistic. I like the fact I can take on leverage, and go long or short on the same index without a lot of hassle. I can buy and sell them quickly and set stops during my "breaks" at my day job. I don't stay in them long...usually swing trading with a one to three day time horizon. I'm making good money with them because they can be reasonably predictable with the right charts. For me, they are a stepping stone. SM
I mostly trade index futures intraday and ETFs for swings. I also like to use ETFs (mainly SSO) intraday as a low-risk way to test the waters, especially early in the session. I plan to start using them more in my long-term investing as well. The thing I love about them is they're a great way to index, and you can find one for pretty much any investment category under the sun.
I try to stay away from the leveraged ones because of the decay. although i read a cool post about shorting faz/fas to take advantage OF the decay. anyone try that with success
GDX, as a leveraged way to play gold volatility. Also, its options are at $1 increments and very liquid.
I trade them on down days. One of my favorites is SSG because it's good for a quick bang, and I'm not stuck watching it.
I trade three ETFs that are fully shortable via my interactive brokers account. I trade them because the alternative futures would give me too high exposure. I am currently short all three.