ETF Education

ETFplus: the ETFs and ETC/ETNs market

ETFplus is the regulated electronic market of Borsa Italiana fully dedicated to the trading in real time of instruments that replicate the performance of indices or single commodities. The financial instruments traded on the ETFplus market are:

• ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds): listed on Borsa Italiana since 2002, ETFs have achieved increasing success among both institutional and private investors. This is evidenced by the significant increase in traded volumes and number of negotiated instruments.

• Structured ETFs: these are innovative UCITs, that allow investors to have access to particular investment strategies such as the possibility of taking a market position with leverage effect (leveraged ETFs) or bet, with or without leverage, on the reductions (short ETFs). 

• Active ETFs: their objective is not to replicate a benchmark, but to expose themselves to an “active” reference strategy developed and updated by a delegated manager.

• ETC/ETNs: these financial instruments are not funds even if they are similar to them by operating mechanism. They are issued through the direct investment of the issuer in an underlying or derivative contract on the underlying. Their price is, therefore, directly or indirectly related to the performance of the underlying, exactly like the price of the ETFs is linked to the value of the reference index.