Welcome to the ETF Prime Podcast
One of the “most helpful plain-English resources for investors who want to demystify exchange-traded funds” – Bloomberg Businessweek
Latest Episode
Astoria’s 10 ETFs for 2026 and Vanguard’s Approach to Active Equity ETFs
John Davi, Founder & Chief Investment Officer at Astoria Portfolio Advisors, highlights the firm’s 10 ETFs for 2026. Ryan Barksdale, Head of Active Equity Product at Vanguard, and Kim Gailun, Head of Equity Boutiques at Wellington Management, discuss their collaboration in bringing Vanguard’s first active equity ETFs to market.
About the Podcast
ETF Prime is hosted by Nate Geraci. Learn how to make ETFs a part of your investment portfolio as Nate spotlights individual ETFs and interviews experts from across the country. ETF Prime is available on Apple Podcasts, Android, Spotify, and most other major podcasting platforms. Specific guest interviews can be accessed by visiting the ETF Expert Corner.
Recent Episodes
Mutual Fund Tax Pain
One of the biggest benefits ETFs provide investors is they can cut your tax bill. Because of their legal structure and minimal trading, ETFs typically distribute very little, if any, capital gains to investors. As The Motley Fool explains, the same is not true for mutual funds. Adding salt to the wound this year: some investors are going to be paying heavy taxes on capital gains – – even though their funds might be down 40%!
So, what can you do to protect yourself? If you must buy a mutual fund, wait until after the fund pays out its capital gains before you buy. You can generally check with the mutual fund provider website to find that date.
If you already own a fund and it hasn’t yet paid its capital gains distribution, you can avoid the distribution and still retain much of the performance of the fund by selling the fund and buying a highly correlated ETF at the same time.
One place to start your search for a suitable ETF replacement is at the free correlation calculator here. Click on the field ‘correlation cloud’, then type in your mutual fund ticker along with a few ETFs that you think might be a good match (you need 5 tickers to run the program). Any result in the high 90’s means the ETF is likely a candidate for replacement for your fund.