Maybe this is just a pedantic terminology thing, but what you're talking about is much narrower than the ETF.
I think the image of an ETF you're seeing is of the S&P 500 index fund or total stock market index fund.
However, an ETF is just a method of exchanging securities. There are thousands of ETFs in all kinds of different categories: https://etfdb.com/etfs/
I personally subscribe to the idea that the fears about passive indexes ruining the market with feedback loop economics are overblown.
What they really did was bring down the cost of actively managed funds by providing competition. Not only that, in the post-Bogle world there are a lot of "hybrid" funds and robofunds that offer index-like expense ratios with more opinionated holdings than VTI.
Ah yes you are absolutely right. I meant „stock index ETF“ when I said „ETF“. But then I believe the parent posters were also referring to index ETFs when they said „ETF“, so it‘s just us normies polluting the name spaces again :-)
I think the image of an ETF you're seeing is of the S&P 500 index fund or total stock market index fund.
However, an ETF is just a method of exchanging securities. There are thousands of ETFs in all kinds of different categories: https://etfdb.com/etfs/
I personally subscribe to the idea that the fears about passive indexes ruining the market with feedback loop economics are overblown.
What they really did was bring down the cost of actively managed funds by providing competition. Not only that, in the post-Bogle world there are a lot of "hybrid" funds and robofunds that offer index-like expense ratios with more opinionated holdings than VTI.