Since exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were first introduced in 1993, interest in them has grown steadily. In one year alone, ETF assets increased by a staggering 49% to reach $588.2 billion.

Although ETFs resemble index mutual funds, they actually have a lot in common with individual shares of stock. ETFs can be purchased on margin, sold short, and traded any time the markets are open. If you are seeking an investment that can offer the benefits of both mutual funds and stocks, an ETF may be an option to consider.

An ETF is a passively managed portfolio of securities that is initially sold by an investment company and thereafter traded in individual shares on a stock exchange. The underlying securities may all be from a certain sector or country, or they may track a broad market index.

Taking Stock

ETF share prices are more likely to be based on the demand for the shares themselves

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Two weeks ago, I wrote an article in Money and Markets talking about Bud's surge on takeover rumors. And I pointed out that InBev's rumored buyout price of $65 a share meant there was still plenty of upside ahead. Since then, BUD stock has climbed to $61 a share, good for another 5% profit. Not too shabby given the broad market's performance over the same period. There are still some hurdles to the deal -- inlcuding a strong backlash from U.S. beer fans -- so this may be as far as the shares go for a while. Still, it's nice to see a solid dividend stock tacking on a little capital apprecation in a flagging market.

So the current leader of the financial bloggers stock picking contest is Smarty with 100% allocation to Nvidia Corp. (NVDA). In the first two (2) day of this competition, the stock was up more than 9% from the close of April 2008. With that kind of action, I decided to write a financial analysis review of the company.

To start the first post, I would like to provide an overview to NVDA using some of the tools I have shared in my posts:

Company Overview, taken from latest 10-k filings:
NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the graphic processing unit, or the GPU. Our products are designed to generate realistic, interactive graphics on consumer and professional computing devices. We serve the entertainment and consumer market with our GeForce products, the professional design and visualization market with our Quadro products, and the high-performance computing …