Fee compression has been a constant in the ETF industry. The largest, most popular exchange-traded funds tend to be some of the cheapest funds on the market, and they’ve been getting cheaper every year. There’s an obvious reason for that: competition. When you have so many high quality issuers offering similar funds, investors are going to gravitate toward the cheapest ones. It’s tough to launch yet another S&P 500 ETF when your much larger competitors are charging just a few basis points for theirs. There are ways to avoid the never-ending fee war though. One-of-a-kind products that can’t be easily replicated by ... (full story)