How do ETF fees get applied?
The ETF price quoted on the stock exchange is in principle not referenced to NAV. The fund administrator will calculate and publish the NAV net of all fees, but the ETF price you see is determined by the market just like for any other security.  Having said that, the market will not normally deviate greatly from the NAV of the fund, so you can safely assume that ETF quoted price is net of relevant fees.
The question is valid, you just need to work backwards. After how much money-time will the lower expense offset the one time fee?  Lower expenses will win given the right sum of money and right duration for the investment. Mutual funds are collections of investments that other people pay to join.  It would be simpler to calculate the value of all these investments at one time each day, and then to deem that any purchases or sales happen at that price.  The fund diversifies rather than magnifies risk, looking to hold rather than enjoy a quick turnaround.  Nobody really needs hourly updated price information for an investment they intend to hold for decades. They quote their prices on a daily basis and you take the daily price.  This makes sense for a vehicle that is a balanced collection of many different assets, most of which will have varying prices over the course a day.  That makes pricing complicated.  This primer explains mutual fund pricing and the requirements of the Investment Company Act of 1940, which mandates daily price reporting.  It also illustrates the complexity: How does the fund pricing process work? Mutual fund pricing is an intensive process that takes place in a short time frame at the end of the day. Generally, a fund’s pricing process begins at the close of the New York Stock Exchange, normally 4 p.m. Eastern time. The fund’s accounting agent, which may be an affiliated entity such as the fund’s adviser, or a third-party servicer such as the fund’s administrator or custodian bank, is usually responsible for calculating the share price. The accounting agent obtains prices for the fund’s securities from pricing services and directly from brokers. Pricing services collect securities prices from exchanges, brokers, and other sources and then transmit them to the fund’s accounting agent. Fund accounting agents internally validate the prices received by subjecting them to various control procedures. For example, depending on the nature and extent of its holdings, a fund may use one or more pricing services to ensure accuracy. Note that under Rule 22c-1 forward pricing, fund shareholders receive the next daily price, not the last daily price.  Forward pricing makes sense if you want shareholders to get the most accurate sale or purchase price, but not if you want purchasers and sellers to be able to make precise calculations about gains and losses (how can you be precise if the price won't be known until after you buy or sell?). "My knowledge relates to ETFs only. By definition, an ETF's total assets can increase or decrease based upon how many shares are issued or redeemed.  If somebody sells shares back to the ETF provider (rather than somebody else on market) then the underlying assets need to be sold, and vice-versa for purchasing from the ETF provider.  ETFs also allow redemptions too in addition to this. For an ETF, to determine its total assets, you need to you need to analyze the Total Shares on Issue multipled by the Net Asset Value.  ETFs are required to report shares outstanding and NAV on a daily basis. ""Total assets"" is probably more a function of marketing rather than ""demand"" and this is why most funds report on a net-asset-value-per-share basis. Some sites report on ""Net Inflows"" is basically the net change in shares outstanding multiplied by the ETF price. If you want to see this plotted over time you can use a such as: http://www.etf.com/etfanalytics/etf-fund-flows-tool which allows you to see this as a ""net flows"" on a date range basis." ETrade allows this without fees (when investing into one of the No-Load/No-Fees funds from their list). The Sharebuilder plan is better when investing into ETF's or stocks, not for mutual funds, their choice (of no-fees funds) is rather limited on Sharebuilder. The process would look something like:  1. Register your investment company with the SEC 2. Get the ETF approved by the SEC  3. Get a custodian bank (likely requires min assets of a few million) 4. Get listed on an exchange like NYSEARCA by meeting requirements and have an IPO   1 and 2 probably require a lot of time and fees and would be wise to have a lawyer advising, 3 is obviously difficult due to asset requirements and 4 would probably involve an investment bank plus more fees While I might have to agree with PiratesSayARRR from below about missing case details, I have to say, your math seems to check out to me. Although the numbers aren't rouded off and pretty, they back out. $22,285.71 generates $334.28 of fees in a month; subtract from that the monthly cost of funds (.003333 x $22285.71)= $74.28... $334.28-74.28 = $260.00. Hate to say it, but maybe they didn't hire you for a different reason? NO. All the leveraged ETFs are designed to multiply the performance of the underlying asset FOR THAT DAY, read the prospectus. Their price is adjusted at the end of the day to reflect what is called a NAV unit. Basically, they know that their price is subject to fluctuations due to supply and demand throughout the day - simply because they trade in a quote driven system. But the price is automatically corrected at the end of the day regardless. In practice though, all sorts of crazy things happen with leveraged ETFs that will simply make them more and more unfavorable to hold long term, the longer you look at it. The same reason a company would offer coupons. I'd guess they're just doing it as a way to entice people to do their investing with them. Since it is any ETF I doubt they are being compensated by the ETF companies, as is sometimes the case (iShares does this with Fidelity, for example). And they still get the commission on the sale. Most bond ETFs have switched to monthly dividends paid on the first of each month, in an attempt to standardize across the market.  For ETFs (but perhaps not bond mutual funds, as suggested in the above answer) interest does accrue in the NAV, so the price of the fund does drop on ex-date by an amount equal to the dividend paid. A great example of this dynamic can be seen in FLOT, a bond ETF holding floating rate corporate bonds.  As you can see in this screenshot, the NAV has followed a sharp up and down pattern, almost like the teeth of a saw. This is explained by interest accruing in the NAV over the course of each month, until it is paid out in a dividend, dropping the NAV sharply in one day. The effect has been particularly pronounced recently because the floating coupon payments have increased significantly (benchmark interest rates are higher) and mark-to-market changes in credit spreads of the constituent bonds have been very muted. "Usually the new broker will take care of this for you. It can take a couple of weeks. If you are planning to go with Vanguard, you probably want to actually get an account at Vanguard, as Vanguard funds usually aren't ""No Transaction Fee"" funds with many brokers. If you are planning to invest in ETFs, you'll get more flexibility with a broker." The ETF supply management policy is arcane.  ETFs are not allowed to directly arbitrage their holdings against the market.  Other firms must handle redemptions & deposits.  This makes ETFs slightly costlier than the assets held. For ETFs with liquid holdings, its price will rarely vary relative to the holdings, slippage of the ETF's holdings management notwithstanding.  This is because the firms responsible for depositing & redeeming will arbitrage their equivalent holdings of the ETF assets' prices with the ETF price. For ETFs with illiquid holdings, such as emerging markets, the ETF can vary between trades of the holdings.  This will present sometimes large variations between the last price of the ETF vs the last prices of its holdings. If an ETF is shunned, its supply of holdings will simply drop and vice versa. "ETF Creation and Redemption Process notes the process: While ETF trading occurs on an exchange like stocks, the process by   which their shares are created is significantly different. Unless a   company decides to issue more shares, the supply of shares of an   individual stock trading in the marketplace is finite. When demand   increases for shares of an ETF, however, Authorized Participants (APs)   have the ability to create additional shares on demand. Through an ""in kind"" transfer mechanism, APs create ETF units in the   primary market by delivering a basket of securities to the fund equal   to the current holdings of the ETF. In return, they receive a large   block of ETF shares (typically 50,000), which are then available for   trading in the secondary market. This ETF creation and redemption   process helps keep ETF supply and demand in continual balance and   provides a ""hidden"" layer of liquidity not evident by looking at   trading volumes alone. This process also works in reverse. If an investor wants to sell a   large block of shares of an ETF, even if there seems to be limited   liquidity in the secondary market, APs can readily redeem a block of   ETF shares by gathering enough shares of the ETF to form a creation   unit and then exchanging the creation unit for the underlying   securities. Thus, the in-kind swap to the underlying securities is only done by APs so the outflow would be these individuals taking a large block of the ETF and swapping it for the underlying securities.  The APs would be taking advantage of the difference between what the ETF's trading value and the value of the underlying securities." 1: Low fees means: a Total Expense Ratio of less than 0,5%. One detail you may also want to pay attention to whether the fund reinvests returns (Thesaurierender Fonds) which is basically good for investing, but if it's also a foreign-based fund then taxes get complicated, see http://www.finanztip.de/indexfonds-etf/thesaurierende-fonds/ "Don't put money in things that you don't understand. ETFs won't kill you, ignorance will. The leveraged ultra long/short ETFs hold swaps that are essentially bets on the daily performance of the market. There is no guarantee that they will perform as designed at all, and they frequently do not. IIRC, in most cases, you shouldn't even be holding these things overnight. There aren't any hidden fees, but derivative risk can wipe out portions of the portfolio, and since the main ""asset"" in an ultra long/short ETF are swaps, you're also subject to counterparty risk -- if the investment bank the fund made its bet with cannot meet it's obligation, you're  may lost alot of money. You need to read the prospectus carefully. The propectus re: strategy. The Fund seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to twice the inverse (-2x) of the daily performance of the Index. The Fund does not seek to achieve its stated investment objective over a period of time greater than a single day. The prospectus re: risk. Because of daily rebalancing and the compounding of each day’s return over time, the return of the Fund for periods longer than a single day will be the result of each day’s returns compounded over the period, which will very likely differ from twice the inverse (-2x) of the return of the Index over the same period. A Fund will lose money if the Index performance is flat over time, and it is possible that the Fund will lose money over time even if the Index’s performance decreases, as a result of daily rebalancing, the Index’s volatility and the effects of compounding. See “Principal Risks” If you want to hedge your investments over a longer period of time, you should look at more traditional strategies, like options. If you don't have the money to make an option strategy work, you probably can't afford to speculate with leveraged ETFs either." "I just looked at a fund for my client, the fund is T Rowe Price Retirement 2015 (TRRGX).  As stated in the prospectus, it has an annual expense ratio of 0.63%.  In the fine print below the funds expenses, it says  ""While the fund itself charges no management fee, it will indirectly bear its pro-rata share of the expenses of the underlying T. Rowe Price funds in which it invests (acquired funds). The acquired funds are expected to bear the operating expenses of the fund.""  One of it's acquired funds is TROSX which has an expense ratio of 0.86%.  So the total cost of the fund is the weighted average of the ""acquired funds"" expense ratio's plus the listed expense ratio of the fund.  You can see this at http://doc.morningstar.com/docdetail.aspx?clientid=schwab&key=84b36f1bf3830e07&cusip=74149P796 and its all listed in ""Fees and Expenses of the Fund"""