http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-etf-files/
As they awaited regulatory approval, Bloom says he and Most mentioned their product to a team from the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Canadians, who’d also been studying a variety of index-tracking derivatives, liked what they heard. Unimpeded by the regulatory molasses in Washington, they managed to get their version of a market-basket product—which tracked the Toronto Stock Exchange 35 Index—approved within a year. The Toronto Index Participation Shares, or TIPS, made its debut in 1990. “The idea was hatched in the U.S. but was launched in Canada first,” says Peter Haynes, a managing director at TD Securities who worked at the Toronto Stock Exchange then.
Another fascinating aspect of ETFs is that they’re at once a replacement for a mutual fund, hedge fund, or a separately managed account, as well as a tool used by them. While institutions were the first users of ETFs, much of the recent growth has come from advisers and retail investors—so much so that ETFs’ assets are roughly split between institutional and retail. In other words, ETFs may have accomplished something more unexpected than saving AMEX or providing a liquidity buffer. You can almost say they’ve democratized investing. The little guy is accessing the very same markets—for the same cost—as the big guys.