FAQ

1. How do I create a new account?

You can create your account for ETF Insider here, click “Login” button in the upper right-hand corner and click “Create Account”

2. How do I log into my account?

You can log into your ETF Insider account here, click “Login” button in the upper right-hand corner and then “Login”

3. How can I change my password?

You can change your password here

4. How can I change account details like my email?

Log into your account and then click on “My Account”.

5. How do I delete my account?

We hate to see you leave! Please write us at contact@etfinsider.co. We’re always looking to improve, so please include a few pointers on why you’re looking to delete your account and what we can do about it, if anything. Thank you and we hope to see you soon again!

6. How much does ETF Insider cost?

ETF Insider is free to use. Enjoy it!

7. How to best start with ETF Insider?

The best way to start exploring ETF Insider is by adding a few assets. You can add assets with one of the “add assets” buttons that you can find throughout the app. Add assets you own or are curious about. Once you are comfortable with ETF Insider and are ready to start optimizing your portfolio, you will want to add the assets you actually own. ETF Insider will then help you answer questions like “How strongly do my assets overlap?”, “How strongly are my assets correlated?”, “How strongly am I exposed to certain asset classes, sectors, and geographies?”, and “How ‘efficient’ is my portfolio, as per efficient frontier optimization?”

8. What types of assets can I add?

Right now, you can add ETFs, mutual funds, and stocks.

9. Can I add assets with their ISIN?

No, unfortunately, you can only add assets via their symbols for now. For example, the symbol of the “SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust” is “SPY” and the symbol of the “Invesco QQQ Trust” is “QQQ”.

10. Can I add non-US assets?

11. Can I add my crypto assets?

Crypto assets are not currently supported by ETF Insider. Let us know via Productific here if you want us to work on adding crypto assets to ETF Insider.

12. I want to upload a CSV. What columns should my CSV have?

Your CSV needs to have two columns: “Symbol” and “Quantity”.

13. Where is the data for ETF Insider coming from?

Most of it is from the SEC Edgar system. The rest had to be collected manually from the websites of various issuers.

14. How often are you updating the underlying holdings data for funds?

For the time being, we can only update the holdings data based on the filing submissions to the SEC. These submissions are made every quarter.

15. How do you make sure that data on ETF Insider is accurate?

While we try our very best to keep data accurate, we explicitly cannot guarantee its accuracy. Please always do your homework and read through our disclaimers here.

16. What is the Sankey diagram and how does it work?

The Sankey Diagram is a cool and popular visualization technique that we’re pioneering here at ETF Insider for use in portfolio optimization. Sankey diagrams essentially let you display flows between nodes, where the links between these nodes are represented by arrows or arcs that have a width proportional to the importance of the flow.

Let’s look at an example from ETF Insider. Here, we added the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust with the symbol SPY to our portfolio. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust is a very popular ETF in the US. Depending on your settings, you will see the constituents of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust on the left and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust itself on the right. Go to your settings if you want to switch the axes. You will also notice that the constituents of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust have been sorted by weight. This sorting mechanism can be changed, too. In any case, we quickly see that Apple and Microsoft are the two biggest constituents of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust. Their weight in the fund is also illustrated by how their respective arcs are. Constituents like Bank of America and Mastercard have smaller arcs because their weight in the fund is smaller.

17. What is the performance graph and how does it work?

Compare the performance of your portfolio to any asset or group of assets by making a selection in the diagram.

18. What is the efficient frontier and how does it work?

The efficiency frontier is a graph of risk (measured in standard deviation) to expected returns. Standard deviation is the degree to which a portfolio’s returns deviates from the average returns of all possible combinations of similar asset allocations. The ratio between the portfolio's expected return and its risk (SD) is the Sharpe ratio. The higher the risk of an asset one can expect a higher expected return to compensate for that risk. An efficient asset is one that has the maximum potential expected return for a given level of risk. The closer your portfolio is to the efficient frontier, the more efficient your portfolio is in terms of being compensated for the risk level taken.

a. Circles are equity type assets

b. Triangles are ETF type assets

c. Squares are Mutual Fund type assets

d. The red diamond is the portfolio total.

19. What is the correlation matrix and how does it work?

The correlation matrix is an important tool for understanding how individual assets in your portfolio correlate. In statistics, correlation is defined as any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Assets that are more strongly correlated tend to move in the same direction, whether that’s up or down.

In the example below, we added three funds to ETF Insider: the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust with the symbol SPY, the INVESCO QQQ TRUST with the symbol QQQ, and SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust NYSEARCA with the symbol DIA.

What the correlation matrix in ETF Insider tells you is that the DIA and SPY funds correlate 6.1%. In comparison, the DIA and QQQ funds correlate slightly more with 7.8%. The correlation between SPY and QQQ is notably higher at 15.4%.

Depending on your investment strategy, you may want to reduce or increase correlation among your assets.

20. My app slows down or crashes when I set the Min Asset Threshold (%) to 0%.

Broad market funds often hold hundreds if not thousands of constituents. Many of these constituents make up only a fraction of a percent of the holdings of the fund. Reducing the Min Asset Threshold (%) to 0% impacts the performance of ETF Insider because ETF Insider is now trying to display all a fund’s constituents on a single website, even if there are hundreds that each only make up some 0.01% of the fund. To improve the performance of ETF Insider and make the information we display more digestible for you, we set the Min Asset Threshold (%) to 0.7% by default. We recommend that you always keep the Min Asset Threshold (%) above 0% or remove all assets but one fund before lowering the Min Asset Threshold (%) to 0%.

21. Which features are on the roadmap for ETF Insider?

Great question! Check out our feature voting tool on Productific here. Make sure to vote for features you want us to build next or submit a new feature idea if you can’t find what you’re looking for. Our community is our most important asset and pay close attention to what you want us to do next. If we have the resources to build a highly requested feature and it fits the ETF Insider thesis, rest assured that we’ll build it for you as soon as possible.

22. How can I stay in touch with ETF Insider?

Get in touch with the ETF Insider team at contact@etfinsider.co. Note, though, that we’re receiving a high number of inquiries and are only a small team. It may take a few days until we can get back to you. Please ping us if we do not reply within 7 days

23. I found a bug. Who should I speak to?

We’re sorry to hear that! Please get in touch at contact@etfinsider.co. We’ll get back asap! Thank you for helping to make ETF Insider better for everyone.

24. I have more questions. Who should I speak to?

There are two ways for getting in touch with us.
First, make sure to check out our Reddit communities here Feel free to ask questions and chat with us and fellow ETF Insiders. Don’t forget to be respectful and do not spam.

No success answering your question via the community? Then get in touch with the ETF Insider team at contact@etfinsider.co. Note, though, that we’re receiving a high number of inquiries and are only a small team. It may take a few days until we can get back to you. Please ping us if we do not reply within 7 days.