Fee War Hit Limit With Demise of ETF That Paid You to Invest

  • First ETF offering to pay investors has now started to charge
  • Another zero-fee fund has shut as focus shifts to returns
Photographer: Towfiqu/Moment via Getty Images
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The wave of cost-cutting that has been sweeping the more than $6 trillion global market for exchange-traded funds for the past two years may finally have reached its limit.

In the space of a few weeks, the first and only fund that paid people to invest has switched to a new owner and started to charge, while one of the few “zero-fee” ETFs has been shut down completely.