SmartShares offer 23 exchange-traded fund (ETF) in New Zealand. They tracked different stock and industry index in New Zealand, Australia, United States and international market. It is an excellent opinion for Kiwis investor due to the low-cost and diversified portfolio. So, how easy to get your money out? (Spoiler alert: Very easy)
ETF is tradable share
ETF is similar to an index fund that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, a sector or a basket of assets. However, ETF can be traded on the stock market like any other stock. ETF shareholders are entitled to a proportion of the profits, such as earned interest and dividends paid.
Liquidity of shares
Since ETF is a share, i. In order to get the money out, you will have to sell your ETF in the stock market, just like any other stocks. This brings us to Liquidity of a share.
Liquidity means how easy for you to sell your share into cash on the stock market. If lots of people wanting to buy that share and lots of willing seller on the market, the liquidity is good.
We use trade me as an example here. If you are selling a brand new iPhone on trade me at a price closed to everyone else is selling, you will be able to sell that iPhone quickly. Also, you can use similar amount cash to buy an iPhone on trade me without any problem. So the liquidity of an iPhone is good on trade me.
However, if you want to sell an expensive and rare antique phone on trade me, it may take months and multiple listing to sell that phone. You may have to lower your price to get it sold. It also hard to find another expensive and rare antique phone on trade. So, the liquidity of an expensive and rare antique phone is bad.
Let’s take a look at Auckland International Airport’s stock info.
You can see there is lots of buying (Bids) and selling (Asks) order. Lots of trade happened in 13 mins. The different between buy and sell price (a.k.a. Bid-Ask Spread) is only $0.5c.
Now compare that to Delegat Group Limited’s Share.
There are some buy and sell order, but there was no trade at all. The different between buy and sell price is $10c. There is a seller want to sell 2000 units of share at $6.25, but there is no one taking that offer. If the owner of that 2000 share intends to liquidate the stock quickly, they will have to lower their selling price by $10c to $6.15 to meet the closest bid. That is $200 less on 2000 share.
If you are an owner of Auckland International Airport share, It will be very easy to liquidate your stock in a short time. On the other hand, if you hold shares in Delegat Group Limited, you will have to wait or lower your price for someone to buy your share.
Here is the info on two popular SmartShare ETF, NZ Top 50 and US S&P 500.
Both of them have a good amount of bid/ask and the spread is small. Therefore, the liquidity is good.
Also, there is a market maker for all Smartshare ETF.
Market Maker
A market maker is an investment firm that guarantees liquidity of stock by putting out buy and sells order on the stock market. They make sure investor can always buy or sell the shares.
The Bid and Ask below are the market maker order.
At December 2014, SmartShares appoints Craigs Investment Partners as the market maker. Craigs will offer two-way quotes of agreed minimum volume and maximum spread for an agreed minimum period of the full trading day. This will cover all current Smartshares ETFs, plus future ETFs launched by Smartshares.
Always ready to sell
With a market maker on all Smartshare product, its very easy to liquidate your Smartshares holding. However, you will need a stock broker to sell your shares. Especially for those who purchase Smartshares via monthly contribution plan since you don’t need a broker account to do that. Smartshare is not an investment fund, they will not cash out the ETF for you. Lots of people don’t know that.
In order to sell your Smartshare ETF, you will need a broker to put your holding on the stock market. You can google “Stock Broker NZ” to contact any broker firm and set up an account. The cheapest way for most people is to use
ASB and
ANZ securities to trade online. ANZ cheapest rate is $29.90/trade under $15000. However, you have to be an Online Multi-Currency Account (OMCA) holders with sufficient cleared funds available to fully cover the purchase of securities prior to submission of the order. Otherwise, ANZ charge $29.90 + 0.40% on trade. If you are not an OMCA holder with ANZ, go with ASB Securities, they charge $30 or 0.30% per transactions, whichever higher.
If you currently hold SmartShares ETF and don’t have a brokerage account, do it ASAP. You never know when you need to sell you share in a short period. It will take 2-10 days to set up account with ASB and ANZ. If you starting a monthly contribution plan with SmartShares, make sure you open a brokerage account as well.
The Smart and Lazy 
Hey, so I followed your advise and I’m dipping my feet into the world of investment, with Smartshares US500 fund. Hopefully it’s all great!
Anyway 1 question, when I signed up to the link market services, first time when I logged in, it asked me for my bank details. Do I need to fill this in? I was under the impression that for this fund, all gains are re-invested into the fund and I won’t be getting any dividend payouts along the way?
Should I ignore this or fill it in just in case?
Cheers
LikeLike
Hi AK, I guess you are signing up for Smartshare monthly contribution plan, right? If you already told smartshare to reinvest your return, smartshares won’t put the return into your bank account.
Link market service asking only to keep it on the record.
LikeLike
If I own US top 500, would i be trading that ETF on NZX market or on some US market? If latter, can that be done easily using the ASB/ANZ?
LikeLike
If you own US 500 ETF (USF) that will be trading on NZX market. You can easily trade it with ASB and ANZ stock trading platform.
LikeLike