On 22 January 1993, State Street Global Advisors launched the first ever exchange-traded fund or ETF. The Standard & Poor Depository Receipt (SPDR or “spider” for short) tracked the S&P 500 index and allowed investors everywhere an easy way to invest in 500 of the most successful U.S. companies with just one stock. If you invested in these 500 companies individually, the transaction fees alone would cost you thousands of dollars (not including your capital outlay). But with the ETF, you can have a stake in all these great companies for just US$200. Today the SPDR S&P 500 ETF is still the largest exchange-traded product in the world with over US$180 billion in net assets. In Singapore, State Street Global Advisors introduced the first ETF in Singapore with the SPDR Straits Times Index on 11 April 2002. Today with just S$300, you can own 30 of the most successful ......