Good morning and welcome back to the lecture series on bioelectricity. Today, we will start the module on the plant bioelectricity. So, as we have discussed in the, you remember in the first lecture, we talked about that we have divided the course into different modules, animal bioelectricity, plant bioelectricity, insect bioelectricity and few other some of the ancient molecules will be dealing with. So, following that pattern, so today we are initiating the plant bioelectricity. So, if you remember, we will be studying plant at three different level. So, even before I go about the plant, so whenever we talk about, so the way I have module this section is this, I will introduce you about the plants and where it really fits in the ecosystem and how the bioenergetics on the floor of earth is governed by plants and the overall anatomy of the plants. From there, we will move on to three different aspects of plants which involve transfer of charges or transfer of electrons and which eventually leads to two important things. One is the movement of the plants, the other one is the energy harvesting. So, coming back, after giving this brief background in tell you, so plants, if we look back in the ecosystem or in the whole food chain, our the whole life form depends on sun as the solar energy, that is very fundamental. So, these sun solar energy are being trapped by the green leaves by a very similar way by which a solar cell traps the solar energy and ejects an electron and generates power. Exactly by the same analogy, a plant traps the solar energy, ejects an electron and these electrons further helps in synthesizing very high energy rich molecules and these energy rich molecules are further utilized by the plant for synthesizing energy storage molecules and once the energy storage molecules are formed, the next level of life form the animals which cannot synthesize food directly from sunlight and from here and soil, they eat the plant and eventually once they die, the debris mix on the plant, mix in the soil and the food cycle goes on. So, just to give you a graphical representation of this, just to get an idea, let us get back. So, we are into this lecture into plant bioelectricity and as I have mentioned, we will divide this whole thing into different components. First of all, we will talk about the ecosystem, role of plants, energy harvesting and transfer. Then we will be talking about the classification of plants, classification of plants. After this, we will be talking about the mechanism of energy harvesting which essentially is called photo synthesis. Photo means light, synthesis means synthesizing energy rich molecules using light. So, then from there we will move on to the part of photosynthesis as such, but another section of it which will be plant movement and in this section, we will be talking about Mimosa protica or touch me not plant and venous light wrap. Apart from it, we will be picking up another small section within this which is dye sensitized solar cells. So, this is essentially an inspiration from flowers. So, this is the overall outline what we are going to dealt with which I was trying to tell you verbally that these are the aspects what we are going to deal with. So, coming back to the ecosystem part. So, essentially in the ecosystem what is happening is that, resume sun has the major source of energy. So, solar radiation reaching the flow of earth, the solar radiation is being picked up by the land plants and the water plants that is coming in the form of H nu. And within this machinery, there are all the light falls on these surfaces. There is an ejection of electron out here. This electron eventually leads to the synthesis of energy rich molecules. This energy rich molecule leads to the further synthesis of different storage molecules. And as I was telling you, these plants are eventually consumed by the animals. And again within animals, these animals are consumed by higher animals. And eventually all these dyes out, these all dyes out and increase the biomass of the soil and get transformed into organic matter. And these organic matter is eventually utilized by the plants again along with organic matter plus water plus minerals and in the presence of sunlight. The whole process goes on and on. And what we will be dealing essentially is in this zone where this whole energy transduction is taking place, which is essentially the process of photosynthesis. So, from here if I just refer back to previous slide what I was trying to tell you. So, this is the part, but just now I discussed with you the overall idea of the ecosystem. This is very essential to get a global picture that where we are really heading. And what is the inspiration of this whole process now coming back to this slide. So, this whole electron transfer what is happening in the on the surface of the leaves. So, essentially you can consider the vegetative cover on the floor of earth, whether it is in the water, whether it is in the land, they are very similar to the solar panels. So, essentially whole earth whatsoever percentage of earth discovered with vegetation is essentially functioning as a mechanism of nature by which solar energy is being trapped. And this specific molecules which has the ability to capture the sunlight and eject electron are inspiration for developing next generation of solar cells. So, what we essentially have to understand the structure of these molecules, the process which is governing the electron transport chain within nature and the process by which it synthesize the energy rich molecule. Once we understand this process we will draw inspiration from the current research where people are trying to emulate or mimic these kind of systems in order to develop next generation of energy harvesting devices, next generation of power sources. So, coming back to the classification where I was going. So, next what we will do, we will start with this part the classification of the plants. This is very essential before you could understand where this all these things fits in. So, coming back to the classification of the plants. So, plants could be broadly in a very simple manner plants could be classified into two groups. So, you could have plants which are growing in the land, you could have plants which are growing in the water. This is the broadest of all classification. Land plants, plants growing in water. And these land plants could be further classified into two categories, vascular plant, avascular plant. The vascular plants, avascular plant, this word means within the plants, the plants pick up water, plants pick up nutrients, plants synthesize different things. So, these happen through specific channels, it is just like within our body there are blood vessels which carries blood, there are limb vessels which are carrying limb. Exactly the same analogy holds true for plants where the plants have vessels which carries water and nutrients those are called xylem vessels. And they have vessels which carries energy synthesized energy rich molecules which also is called the plant sap. Those are carried through another series of vessel called flowing vessels. The xylem vessels I will draw it, they are separated from the flowing vessels by a series of dead tissues which ensure the xylem vessel is pretty much water proof of the whole tube through which the water moves through is kind of water proof on all the sides. So, the vascular plants are the one which has very specialized xylem and flowing vessels and avascular plants are the one which does not have the xylem and the flowing vessels. So, essentially avascular plants by default has to be a smaller shape, smaller size because they do not have any mechanism to distribute nutrients. So, they can only do by a diffusion process within a very small area or within a very small space as compared to a vascular plant which has specialized machinery to transport any kind of nutrients or water or nutrient to all parts of its system. So, not having that. So, vascular plant avascular plants. So, vascular plants are further classified into three groups. Those three groups are called angiosperm, gymnastperm and ferns. So, angiosperms are the ones which in which the seeds are covered with fleshy coating. So, these are the plants like mango or apple where you see the seed is deep inside and it is covered by a complete fleshy eatable matter. So, these falls on the angiosperm. Then you have the gymnastperms. These have naked seeds. There is no covering on the seeds and then you have the ferns. Ferns are though they have vascular system, but they are without and yet you have vascular plants. They do not have any specialized xylem or flowing vessel. So, these have, let me put it, xylem and vessels. So, a vascular plant, these includes moses and liver nodes and this what classifies us with the different plants which are found in the land. Whereas, on the other side, when we are talking about plants growing in water, they are mostly falling under the seeds. So, now all these plants have one common feature which is in the previous slide when I was speaking to you guys about this whole process of photosynthesis. So, they all have chlorophyll and they all synthesize food from the sunlight and this remain our central thematic for a long period of time in the world where we live. We always believe this, but certain extraordinary discoveries in the last century change the way we think. So, what I have drawn you is sun in the plants and synthesizing energy, animals are consuming it, all of them are dying, adding up organic matter. So, this whole process depends on sunlight, yet this whole mechanism is not the only way by which life has evolved. During 1970s, especially the this 1977, some of the teams of National Geographic and few other expert in oceanography, they were exploring in the sea pretty much deep down into the core or into the floor of this ocean and they found in there are several places or at least the first discovery was made in Galapagos Island deep inside where no sunlight ever reaches, where there are existence of high pressure, low temperature situation, there is something called hydrothermal vents. These are the fissures or these are the gap through which the from the inner core, the heat is kind of ejected out onto the floor of the ocean and that is why they found that complete dark exceptionally low temperature, they found life is thriving. What I will do in this context, I will send you some of the links for the videos which are available online, which will help you to appreciate and it was amazing to see how the life thrives in those hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents and in and around hydrothermal vents, there are series of sulphide related molecules, iron dyes sulphide, iron copper sulphide likewise and several, there is no sunlight. So, let us again rewrite the previous graph. So, now we are talking about situation. So, if this is the ocean surface and if the sun is sitting here out here. So, most of the lifeform or the seaweeds what you see are growing either on the top of this and that is it, may be up to this maximum few feets underneath, but sunlight never reaches anything beyond it. That is it, maximum sunlight will reach this and where you will see the life. So, let me label it for you further understanding, this is the ocean surface, this green ones are there and now we are talking about a situation deep inside. So, we are out here, several feets underneath, this is where this is almost 600 to 700 or even more, this is the sea flow or the ocean flow and from here comes out all the hydrants, there is a formation of these hydrothermal vents out here.  Now, I will give you this all those videos, link of the videos you will see, hydrothermal vents and white black smokers, these are also called the chimneys. And this is the zone which is kind of you know very lot of sulphides, iron, magnesium and series of them. This is a very hostile environment and here you see a series of light forms going through. So, then whether these light forms, now if you compare this situation, where there is no light reaching, how the electron transfer is taking place. So, there is no photosynthesis taking place in this situation, but if you compare this picture with this picture, where there is a sun which is directly hitting upon the leaves and if you see this picture now, there is no sun which is hitting upon the surface. So, these kind of light forms leads to 1977 changed our way we think, this leads to a new form of synthesis, new form of electron transport or electron transfer that falls under another like another form which is called chemo synthesis. And this part of chemo synthesis falls under all the ancient molecule will be dealing with especially with special reference to iron, disulfide and other molecules will be dealing with the whole chemo synthesis, where solar energy is not a essential criteria for electron transport. So, photosynthesis and chemo synthesis. So, now coming back to the classification of the plants where I was trying to classify it. So, the seaweeds now putting another one more site classification out here within the sea very deep inside you cannot call them plants there is another group of organism called Archaeans growing very low or no oxygen very high pressure fairly low temperature and first important the new sunlight deep inside the ocean floor these life forms thrive. So, these life forms essentially what will be dealing with the ancient molecules what I have discussed in the global scheme of science in the beginning that there are molecules which are not dependent in nature on solar energy or any form of light as such. So, coming back to the classification this is we told just to give you an overall picture that it is not always the sunlight which involves in the electron transport. So, talking about the inspiration what we are drawing. So, of course the way it will go is and there is one more thing. So, if I look at the now let us discuss the anatomy of the plant in very brief. So, I am not going to come back to this. So, I have given you the classification of the plant.  So, this is what we are trying to do classification of the plant. So, ecosystem and here let me add one more thing after classification of the plant will be dealing with the very brief anatomy of plants. So, ecosystem of plant. So, we have talked about this part as of now we have talked about the overall classification of the plant. Now, we will be talking about the brief anatomy of the plant in this class. So, coming back to the anatomy of the plants. So, the plant has like if of course, here we are only talking about the mostly the classic angiospermic plant which has seeds and everything. So, if you look at a plant structure almost like this on that go down. So, underneath you have all the root system. Now, giving a normal picture here you have the flowers leads to the seeds and everything, here you have the leaves, here you have the main stem and here you have the root system. So, the way it works is sunlight is falling on these surfaces and water plus nutrients are traveling along this and all the assimilation taking place out here and the heritage molecules are stored along another series of assets. So, now what we will do? We will blow up the cross section of the stem of the root. So, if you see the cross section, cross section of a cross section, cross section will look something like this cross section has. So, this is not the right way let me just rub it off and do it again. So, you see there is a central canal which I have drawn in yellow. So, that is the one which is carrying what we are terming as the xylem vessels that is carrying the water up into the plants from the roots. So, this xylem vessel and the flowing vessels are all over up to the tip of the root all the way up to the tip of the shoot. They travel all along. So, there are pipes which are traveling along. So, it is something like let me show you by some simple chalk pieces which are lying here. They are like this. This is the vessel and surrounded by the flowing vessels. So, xylem vessel is in the center and surrounded by the flowing vessels. Imagine there are other chalks which are surrounding it and they are the flowing vessels. So, these central ones are the, this is your xylem which is allowing the water to move all the way up, water and nutrients. What you see in the flowing vessels on the other side and this side, these are the ones which are ensuring the plant sat or whatever the molecules. So, whatever the molecules which are being synthesized by the plant, the energy rich molecules or the storage molecules, they remain in the flowing and between the xylem and the flowing there is pretty much water proofing molecules which ensures none of the water is kind of lost. This gives the water proofing. What you see I am just putting the crosses on in between the xylem and the flowing vessels. So, this is kind of a water proofing of xylem vessels because this is very essential that the water is not being lost from the xylem vessel otherwise, you know there will be a absolute mix up and this water proofing is done by a series of molecules called lignins. Lignins are the ones which ensures that it is not being lost and if you see the cross section of this, if you just cut the cross section what you will see essentially is something like this. In the center and we see the xylem vessel and the peripheries you will see all the yellow just I will reverse the colors you do not get worried. So, this is the cross sectional view here you have the xylem and here you have the flowing vessels. There are multiple flowing vessels which are traveling all along and this will come very handy while we will be talking about the non-movement and coming back to the structure of the leaves which you have discussed as of now. There is something called pithiol which is here and these are the veins of the leaves which are carrying the nutrients and the water at the different parts of the solar harvesting mechanism. Apart from it what is important for you people to understand is why I have drawn the flower. So, this flower these flowers are the inspiration for the first slide if you go back I mentioned about the disensitized solar cell. All these different dyes present on the flower they all have ability to trap sunlight and eject electron only difference between these and the major molecule in photosynthesis which is called chlorophyll is that the other dyes have lower molar absorption coefficient will come to all these things molar absorption and that is why they do not directly take part in photosynthesis. Instead they try to concentrate the solar energy on the leaves and help the chlorophyll molecule to move ahead and perform the function of trapping the sunlight and eject the electron. But those molecules are the inspiration for last almost three decades since 1980's it has all started with the discovery or with the finding by Gretzel. So, we will be talking about the Gretzel cells out here which are direct inspiration from nature from the structures of the flowers all the dyes of the flowers which are derived from here are used for. And of course, there are several dyes which are synthesized after getting inspiration from the floral dyes. So, overall in this module we will be talking in this module we will be talking about. So, after giving you this brief outline of the anatomy classification. So, back to my second slide where I was now I have talked about the anatomy. So, the ecosystem I have done I will give you a brief idea we have talked about the classification of the plants we have talked about the brief anatomy of the plant. And of course, I told you why from where the inspiration for dye sensitize solar cells. So, now what we will do after this. So, with this brief introduction about the plant systems and how they are transferring electrons and everything. I will move on to the real process where the plants are harvesting the sunlight and ejecting electrons and that will fall under photosynthesis. So, I will not come back to all these things any further. So, now on I will be talking about in the next class what we will be starting is I will be talking about the overall photosynthetic machinery, the chlorophyll molecule, the different types and their spectral properties. Then we will be talking about the electron transport chain and likewise. So, I will close in here and in the next class we will continue with this, but then we will be directly talking about the energy harvesting through photosynthesis, photosystem 1, photosystem 2. Then C3, C4 plants and the inspiration drawn out of these photosynthesis in terms of water splitting complex and chlorophyll for developing next generation of energy harvesting devices. And from there we will move on to the plant movements where even could be considered the rudimentary nervous system of the plant and the tailpiece of this section will move on to the disincentive solar cells. Thanks a lot.


Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation, ETF versus Mutual Fund. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Most of this information comes from Investopedia ETF versus Mutual Fund. What's the difference, which you can find online. Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This by Christina Majowski updated March 25th, 2022. In prior presentations we've been looking at investment goals, investment strategies, investment tools, keeping the two main categories of investment in mind that being fixed income, typically bonds, and then equities, typically stocks. We're mainly focused on the stock side of things here when we're looking at the ETFs and Mutual Funds. Quick recap of what stock is, corporations separately legal entity breaking out the ownership into units of stock, which represent equal units of ownership of the corporation. The corporation then might be traded on an exchange, publicly traded corporation. The exchange allowing easier access to individuals, benefiting the corporation because they can generate capital or cash by having a wider pool from which to issue stocks to. It benefits the individual who has the capacity then to invest in the stocks that are traded on the exchanges more easily. However, it's still costly to be purchasing individual stocks oftentimes and it's more difficult to diversify the portfolio then if you use other tools such as the ETFs and the Mutual Funds, which both are a tool that can basically pool investments together under the umbrella of say an ETF or a Mutual Fund, which might be specific to a particular type of goal of the particular fund, allowing individual investors to be able to invest less money, but still grab some diversification and get the benefits of diversification. So most people that are individual investors that are looking for a long term horizon for their investment and possibly using tools such as a 401k plan, 403b plan, or an IRA are utilizing some component of an ETF or Mutual Fund as part of their strategy. So what's the difference then between the ETFs and the Mutual Funds? Let's look at it now. Investors face a bewildering array of choices, stocks or bonds, domestic or international, different sectors and industries, value or growth, etc. When we start diving into the weeds of investing, it can be quite overwhelming. Part of the benefit of the Mutual Funds is to make things a little bit more simplified, hopefully, while still getting diversification for individual investors, deciding whether to buy a Mutual Fund or exchange traded fund, that's the ETF, may seem like a trivial consideration next to all the others, but there are key differences between the two types of funds that can affect how much money you make and how you make it. Both Mutual Funds and ETFs hold portfolios of stocks and or bonds and occasionally something more exotic such as precious metals or commodities. So they're similar in nature in that you typically have your Mutual Fund or ETF, which is holding onto multiple different kinds of investments, depending on the term of the Mutual Fund managed by the fund manager, individuals investing in it are in essence pooling their money together, that money then being distributed amongst the assets, so you can get that diversification. So they must adhere to the same regulations concerning what they can own, how much can be concentrated in one or few holdings, and how much money they can borrow in relation to the portfolio size and more. Beyond these elements, the paths diverge and that's our concern here. What's the differences between the two? So some of the differences may seem obscure, but they can make one type of fund or the other a better fit for your needs. Now remember that the Mutual Funds have been around a bit longer, and so now we've got the ETF, so it can be a little bit confusing between the two. We're going to start then with the Exchange Traded Funds. This is the newer of the two. So as the name suggests, Exchange Traded Funds trade on exchanges. So the funds themselves change trade on the exchanges just as common stocks do. So in other words, when you buy and sell common stocks, typically you're buying and selling them on the exchange. You're normally not buying them from the issuer of the stock unless it was an initial public offering, but often times from other kinds of investors. The exchange, if you have an ETF, it has a holding then of stocks within it or investments within it or under the umbrella of it and are being traded under the umbrella by the manager of the ETF. But then you can buy and sell the ETF itself on the exchange. So at the other side of the trade is some other investor like you, not the fund manager. So when you're buying and selling the ETF, you're buying and selling the ETF kind of similar to buying and selling the stock, except that the ETF is an ETF representing the holding or the holding or the umbrella of the holdings rather than a single stock. So you can buy and sell at any point during the trading session at whatever price is at the moment based on market conditions. So that's kind of nice because then you can trade the ETF in a similar way as the stocks. And if you're trading ETFs like stocks, meaning you're not holding them on to them for a long period of time possibly, but you're kind of trading them, then you can trade them during the day, not just at the end of the day. In that case, again, a lot of people might not be doing that because you might be holding the ETFs for more of a long term or extended time, but you have that capacity. And there's no minimum holding period. This is especially relevant in the case of ETFs tracking international assets where the price of assets hasn't yet updated to reflect the new information, but the U.S. market valuation of it has as a result, ETFs can reflect the new market reality faster than mutual funds. Again, that might not be a big difference to people that are holding ETFs for a long period of time, have a long time horizon, but that updating can be beneficial depending on how often, you know, or how you're using the ETF. Another key difference is that most ETFs are index tracking, meaning that they try to match the returns and price movements of an index such as an S&P 500 by assembling a portfolio that matches the index constituents as closely as possible. Now, when you're investing under these umbrellas like an ETF or mutual fund, then you've got the fund manager to some degree that's going to be helping to buy and sell what's under the fund. The question then is how restricted is that fund manager? You could put restrictions on the type of stocks and bonds or investments that they're going to have, and you can also say, I'm going to really restrict them by saying, I want you to tie your information to the indexes, indexes being kind of like an average of the performance. So you can kind of think of it as though we're trying to like take a survey of how people are going to vote. We're going to take a pool of people that are going to possibly represent the whole population and extrapolate that result to the full population. That's what the basic indexes are kind of doing. That's how the market is measured by these averages. So we could say, hey, look, I want you to have the ETF tied to the index, which means I don't want you actively managing really or having too much control over what you're going to do. I just want you to manage our portfolio to tie into the index, meaning we're betting on whatever the average of the index is. Now mutual funds can do this too, but you can also buy mutual funds that are not tied to an index. And so they're going to have more active management involved. So it depends on what you're what you want in that case. So passive management isn't the only reason ETFs are typically cheaper. So if you have passive management instead of an active management, then you would think the index would be cheaper because the passive manager is not picking and choosing the stocks under the portfolio. They're just tying it to the index. So index tracking ETFs have lower expenses than index tracking mutual funds. So now you can say, well, there are index tracking mutual funds, why now we still have the ETFs with lower expenses and the in the actively managed ETFs out there cheaper than actively managed mutual funds. So it seems cheaper on the ETF. So clearly something else is going on. It relates to the mech mechanics of running the two kinds of funds and the relationships between funds and their shareholders. So with an ETF, because buyers and sellers are doing business with one another, managers have less to do. So with the ETF, you're kind of taking the middleman out to some degree. If you can take the middleman out and still get things done, then you would think there would be less cost, less expenses, which could be beneficial, of course, to the investors. The ETF providers, however, want the price of the ETF set by trades within the date to align as closely as possible to the net asset valuation of the index. So to do this, they adjust the supply of shares by creating new shares or redeeming old shares. Price too high, ETF providers will create more supply to bring it back down. All of this can be executed with a computer program untouched by human beings. So the program is tying it to the index to tie all this out, which means that it should be somewhat automated and you shouldn't have that human involvement and therefore the price should be cheaper for it. So the ETF structure results in more tax efficiency too. Investors in ETFs and mutual funds are taxed each year based on the gains and losses incurred within the portfolio. Now note, oftentimes people have holdings in an ETF or a mutual fund that's under an umbrella of a tax deferred plan, such as a 401k or an IRA plan. If that's the case, then you may not be taxed until you pull the money out of the 401k or an IRA plan. However, if you're not under the umbrella of a 401k or an IRA plan, normally if it was just stocks, for example, you're buying and selling stocks, if you hold on to the stocks, then you're not getting charged gains as you hold on to the stocks because even though the stock has gone up in value or hopefully it has, if you haven't sold it, you haven't realized it and therefore it's not an taxable event. However, when you sell the stock, you could be subject to taxes. If you have something under the umbrella, like an ETF or a mutual fund, then you haven't sold the ETF or a mutual fund, but there's still activity going on within the ETF or mutual fund, the buying and selling of stocks, which could result in taxable events that you would get 1099s on at the end of the year, so on. But ETFs engage in less internal trading, so they do less trading and less trading creates fewer taxable events. The creation of a redemption mechanism of an ETF reduces the need for selling. So unless you invest through a 401k or other tax favored vehicle, your mutual funds will distribute taxable gains to you, even if you simply hold the shares, meanwhile, with all ETF portfolio, the tax will generally be issued only if and when you sell the shares. So ETFs are still relatively new, while mutual funds have been around for ages. And you could think about that particular situation as mutual funds being a little bit more proven than ETFs at this point in time, so you've got some nice things about the ETFs, of course, but again, they're not having been around quite as long, which to me gives the mutual funds a little bit of an edge in that particular area thus far as well. But in any case, so investors who aren't just starting out are likely to hold mutual funds with built-in taxable gains. So in other words, if you're saying, hey, look, there's some benefits here, possibly ETFs being cheaper to some degree for managing the ETF, meaning if I want to put money into a mutual fund or an ETF and I just want to have an indexed fund, then the mutual fund we're hearing here at might be more expensive than putting my money in a related ETF. However, taking money out of a mutual fund and then investing in the ETF could trigger a taxable event. So you've got to be careful about that because again, if you're holding on to something and you haven't sold it, then you might not have a taxable event. But if you sell something in order to invest in something else, that might result in a taxable event. So if you're thinking, hey, I should move over from my mutual fund to an ETF, you've got to be careful about how you're going to move that position will trigger taxes and then take that into consideration. So selling those funds may trigger capital gains taxes. So it's important to include the tax cost in the decision to move to an ETF. The decision boils down to comparing the long term benefit of switching to a better investment and paying more upfront versus staying put in a portfolio of less optimal investments with higher expenses. Now let's take a look at mutual funds. When you put money into a mutual fund, the transaction is with the company that manages it like the vanguards, the T-Raw prices, the black rocks of the world, either directly or through a brokerage firm. The purchase of a mutual fund is executed at the net asset value of the fund based on its price when the market closes that day or the next if you place your order after the close of the markets. So notice we've got to make the purchase at the end of the day because of the way the mutual fund is structured as opposed to with the TETFs, which you can make the trades basically throughout the day. That might not be a big detriment to many investors who are often putting money into either the mutual fund or the ETF possibly for a long term period, possibly looking to hold onto it for a long time frame. If you're looking to purchase and sell ETFs on a shorter basis or mutual funds in a similar way as you might with the stocks looking for more of the short term gains, then you would think that would be more of a detriment. So when you sell your shares, the same process occurs but in reverse. However, don't be in too great of a hurry. Some mutual funds assess a penalty, sometimes one percent of the shares value for selling early, typically sooner than 90 days after you bought in. So when you put money into the mutual fund, the mutual fund isn't really designed for people to be on the short term putting money into the mutual fund and then selling it on a short term time horizon because again, most people when you put money into the mutual fund, you're doing so on the long term time horizon. So there might be some restraints saying if you're going to invest in the mutual fund, we want you to be in the investment for at least the 90 days or you could have a penalty related to it. Mutual funds, again, I don't think that would be a big problem if your goal is to be investing on the long term time horizon. But if you need the money sooner or if you're trading the mutual fund in a similar way as with the stocks, that could of course be more of a pop problem. Mutual funds can track indexes, but most are actively managed. So note that the actively managed mutual funds would mean now you're putting money pulling it together into a mutual fund and you're giving the manager more active control. You can give various different types of management control. You might say, hey, I want you to be investing in a particular sector, but within that sector, I'm going to let your expertise roll within that sector or you might have more of like a targeted fund where you actually want the fund to change over time and have the mix of the fund change or something like that. But you can do, as is the case with a lot of the ETFs, have them tied to an index. So you could do the same thing with a mutual fund. You could say, I want you to be tied to the indexes so that the manager now has very little control. You would think that that would lower the costs of the managing of the mutual fund because the mutual fund is there then now just to tie the mutual fund investments to the indexes. So in that case, the people who run them pick a variety of holdings to try to beat the index that they judge their performance against. So if you have active management, the whole goal of the active management is that if you're managing within a particular sector, you're hoping the manager outperforms the market. That's what their expertise is there to do. Can they actually do that in the long run? Again, it's hard to tell because you can't really tell someone's performance until after they're dead basically, after their career is over, because someone's performance over a short period of time, even 10 years, is not really reflective of what their performance will look like. It might just look like their risk tolerance level happened to match what would be best for the environment for that short time period. It doesn't really see how they will perform in different environments, how they can adapt. So this can get pricey as actually managed funds must spend money on analysts, economic and industry research, company visits, and so on. So notice that an active managed portfolio not only has to beat the market, they have to beat it by enough of a margin that they pay for their own services, which can be costly. Although when you're talking about a big pool of money, you've got a big pool of money that is going to be paying for those services instead of just used. So that typically makes mutual funds more expensive to run and for investors to own than ETS. So mutual funds and ETS are both open-ended, that means that the number of outstanding shares can be adjusted up or down in response to supply and demand when more money comes into and then goes out of a mutual fund on a given day, the managers have to elevate the imbalance by putting the extra money to work in the markets. If there's a net outflow, they have to sell some holdings if there's insufficient spare cash in the portfolio. So what's the bottom line? Given the distinctions between the two kinds of funds, which one is better for you? It depends. Each can fill certain needs. Mutual funds often make sense for investing in obscure niches, including stocks and smaller foreign companies and complex yet potentially rewarding areas like market natural, neutral or long short equity funds and the future esoteric risk reward profiles. So but in most situations and for most investors who want to keep things simple, ETS with their combination of low costs ease of access and emphasis on index tracking may hold the edge. So their ability to provide exposure to various market segments in a straightforward way makes them useful tools if your priority is to accumulate long term wealth with a balanced broadly diversified portfolio.