Bay Street is fighting over high-interest ETFs that retail investors love, sparking a federal review, say sources | Page 3 | Investing | Discussion forum

Today’s range was 50.21 - 50.23. Every now and again NAV will creep up and then fall back to 50 on ex div date. Depending whether you are buying or selling, you always lose vs NAV. Making money on frequent trading HISA ETFs is possible but only if you are the market maker.

Except that it was the market maker who sold it for 50.23 today and bought for 50.20 yesterday. And you “earned” about a cent per share in interest between yesterday and today by doing nothing. So the actual amount you could have made by trading is negative if you subtract the daily interest.

When I buy and sell bond or stocks ETFs, I find that the trading is different from when I buy or sell instruments like DLR or PSA. On the last two you only ever transact at a slight loss to NAV. Waiting all day trying to make a cent per share does not result in transactions.

When NAV is predictable for the whole day, market makers can easily suck up all transactions with any gain.

AltaRed said
The retail investor could have bought and sold at those prices too. When I buy/sell ETFs, I look at selected bid and ask volumes to see what prices the market maker is using. I could have bought at $50.20 yesterday and sold today at $50.23 too depending on lots being offered.

 

Unless u actually saw 50.20 offer or 50.23 bid actually, chances are you won’t be able to transact at those prices. With market maker and algo trading, any real arb opportunities would be done by the pros before retail.

AltaRed said
That is exactly what my trading software showed that happened Friday. In any event, from a pure curiosity* perspective, I plan to watch PSA this coming week.

* I have no interest in actually buying these things.  

I do know some people will just put in stink bid / offer each day and hope it gets filled. To me unless one can trade at least 10000 shares, its not worth the effort.