The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Financial decision · 1993
SPDR let investors trade the S&P 500 like a stock, and ETFs were born.
Amex and State Street wrapped an index portfolio in a listed security whose shares were created and redeemed in kind, keeping price near value.
State Street Global Advisors · American Stock Exchange
the move
Index investing existed only through mutual funds, which priced once a day and made investors transact with the fund company. On January 22, 1993 the American Stock Exchange listed SPDRs, Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts, an exchange-traded unit investment trust tracking the S&P 500, the first US-listed ETF.
The mechanism that made it work was in-kind creation and redemption. A 1997 Federal Register order described how an investor making a portfolio deposit into the trust received a Creation Unit composed of 50,000 SPDRs, and how the trust was structured so one SPDR's net asset value equaled one-tenth of the S&P 500 Index.
That convertibility is the engine: if the ETF trades above the basket, arbitrageurs create new units and sell them; if below, they buy units and redeem them. Trading the whole index as one share gave investors intraday liquidity, lower cost and tax advantages mutual funds could not match.
why it works
- Creation and redemption in kind means the trust never liquidates holdings to meet redemptions.
- Arbitrage between share price and basket value keeps the ETF close to its net asset value.
- Exchange listing gave intraday pricing instead of a once-a-day fund price.
- The structure could be copied, so one product turned into an industry.
what transfers
Make a fund's shares convertible into the underlying assets and arbitrage does the market-making for you: price stays honest without a manager trading on your behalf.
what came after
SPY grew into the world's largest ETF; by 2023 State Street reported more than $355 billion in assets and average daily trading of $39 billion. ETFs now cover nearly every asset class and country, and the creation-and-redemption structure pioneered in 1993 is the template the industry runs on.
references
- Self-Regulatory Organizations; Order Relating to Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (Federal Register, July 2, 1997)
- State Street Global Advisors' SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust Celebrates its 30 Year Anniversary
- The Story of the First US ETF
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.