Murray Coleman's article paints an ugly picture of how fixed-income ETFs are functioning right now.

Murray Coleman's article paints an ugly picture of how fixed-income ETFs are functioning right now.

Murray focuses on premiums and discounts in the fixed-income space, which is a huge story: fixed-income ETFs are trading at wild variance with their underlying indexes.

There are a variety of reasons why. The fixed-income market is so frozen right now that some bond price indexes are carrying stale data. At the same time, some ETFs are using "fair value" pricing to value their illiquid holdings, which introduces a layer of discretion into how each fund's assets are priced.

To be honest: It's hard to know exactly where these things should be trading. And that, to me, is a big problem.  

The whole idea of investing in ETFs is that they give you clean access to various asset