Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) - Are ETFs a cost-efficient way for institutional investors to invest in the DAX?

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Banking Stock Exchanges Insurance Accounting grade: 20 Grenoble Ecole de Management language: English abstract: 1 AbstractAs the ETF industry has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years inves-tors and advisors are finding themselves with more options than ever before. There's a vast universe of ETF investment options available and once all opportunities are narrowed down and aligned with particular investment ideology investors evaluate the ETF options on number of different criteria to identify and spot the most attractive one of all.This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of ETFs compared to index funds when investing in the German funds market. It examines total and average return volatility and tracking error of ETFs versus index funds tracking the DAX. Also a regression analysis is done in order to draw conclusion on the funds' alpha beta and coefficient determinant. It can be concluded that the hypothesis of whether ETFs are a cost-efficient way for institutional investors to invest in the DAX stands and evidence is provided. Results indicate that ETFs achieve higher average returns and less average volatili-ty. In addition ETFs pursue a better full replication strategy than index funds. As a result the tracking error for ETFs is lower than the index funds'.2 IntroductionSome studies have revealed that institutional investors put less emphasis on trading through stock exchange but prefer to directly create and redeem ex-change traded funds. An exchange-traded fund is a type of investment product that represent basket of securities such as the DAX index and are made available only through brokers and advisors. It was in 1993 that the American Stock Exchange launched the Spiders SPDR to track the S&P 500. It was the first exchange traded product on markets with more coming later on. Diamonds was launched in 1998 which tracked the Dow Jones in industrial