Pros/cons/differences between index fund vs ETF

[7-seasons.com]

Maybe some confusion as to 'fee'?

On the one hand, there may be no purchase/sale fee (no 'load' in US terms).

On the other, there is what I would call an expense ratio (or management fee, perhaps including the 12b-1 fee in US terms). Yearly, and ongoing.

Yeah, could be. But the gold fund he mentioned has a fee of 0.525% to 0.675% per year (a bit higher than the ETF) and a purchase fee of 0% if bought online, at least at my broker SBI:
https://site0.sbisec.co.jp/marble/fund/ ... =26431917B

So I still think he's mistaking a fee of "--" to mean "zero", rather than "unknown". Is this a common way of designating something as unknown - or not available - in Japanese, by the way? It's a bit confusing

Okay great thanks for this, good to know. I was using the American Yahoo site to quickly get the ticker stats, apparently unreliable. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/1699.T? ... c=fin-srch

[sutebayashi]

The main difference I can see is that I can buy ETF in real-time, and the index funds are calculated once a day.
The aim is long term investment (well, at least 5-10 years).

I continue to use toshin for monthly tsumitate, but went and switched a big chunk of my existing portfolio to US ETFs at the start of the year.

When I did some sums it looked like I could save some money, but mostly I was wanting to convince myself to give ETFs a try, and boost my investing experience and pride

Toshin costs have come down over the years, and with ETF dividends paid potentially having tax due, these days I don’t think there is a really big advantage in the lower expense fees of ETFs anymore, but it’s all complicated and probably not worth spending the time to really figure it out.

For my partner and kids, they are all Toshin only, because I see them as being absolutely good enough.

Still, ETFs may be better in some specific cases, but for the average personal investor toshin is fine.

For example of specific cases, I am reading a book by FIRE investor @okeydon now - he likes ETFs because he uses the regular dividends paid, as his income to live off in his early retirement. He is worried he will lose his marbles when he ages and feels this automated income stream will suit him, versus having to sell down his Toshin holdings regularly to raise income.

Another aspect is that there are a great variety of ETFs for which there are not equivalent toshin available. But passive investing is probably going to be better anyway so why worry there.

For most investors, I don’t think they are FIRE nor in desperate need of the myriad of ETFs available, so Toshin seem fine to me.

One last thing I do like about US ETFs, is that these assets are domiciled outside of Japan. This is another whacko thing that probably is no concern for average investors, but I like to be internationally diversified.