Price Determination
Individual Investor

Even when the size of investment is large, creating and redeeming ETFs is not allowed for individual investors in general. Therefore, individual investors can not participate in the primary market and can trade only in the secondary market. Like an individual stock traded in the secondary market, prices are determined by competition by respective ask and bid prices.

Unlike stock, the minimum quotation price unit for ETFs is equally KRW 5. Even if the price is less than KRW 50,000, the minimum quotation quantity unit is 1 unit. As most of the price of an ETF share is less than KRW 50,000 except for bond ETFs, you can have the merit of investing in ETFs even with a small amount of investment money.

Liquidity Provider (LP)

If the spread is expanded because the transactions of a specific ETF transaction are not vitalized, liquidity providers (LPs) must submit liquidity providing quotations to provide trading convenience to investors.

The allowable maximum quoted spread is 2% for ETFs tracking domestic underlying asset and 3% for those tracking overseas underlying asset. If it is more than 2% or 3%, LPs have to submit providing quotations to reduce the spread in the market.

Institutional Investor
Institutional investors not only trade in the secondary market but also actively participate in the primary market as they request for ETF creation and redemption to authorized participants (APs). If the premium/discount to NAV, which is the gap between the NAV (the ETF price in the primary market) and the ETF price formed in the secondary market, increases, the gap between the two prices can be narrowed by continuously conducting arbitrage trading to obtain the difference.