Australian Finance Podcast
How ETFs actually work: Capital growth, dividends & risk explained [2/5]
14 May 2026
Chapter 1: What are the basics of ETFs and how do they work?
Welcome to episode two of our mini series on ETF investing, where we cover everything you need to know about ETFs, exchange traded funds, and how to invest in them to build wealth, maybe pay you some passive income, and generally just make you feel confident about building wealth, no matter what style of investor you are.
This is episode two, and we're actually diving deep into exactly how they work. There are so many myths and misunderstandings of how ETFs actually come together. I almost think of them as self-healing, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that in just a moment. Some people have said there's a bubble going on in ETFs. Is there?
Well, this episode will help you kind of break apart those myths and actually understand why it actually can be safe to use ETFs to build wealth over the long term. As always, I'm joined by Gemma Mitchell here in the studio, and I'm excited to get into it. Hi, I'm Owen, the host of the Australian Finance Podcast.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by BetaShares, one of the leading providers of ETFs here in Australia. Serving thousands of financial advisors and over 1 million investors, BetaShares manages tens of billions of dollars on behalf of investors right across the country.
I'm proud to partner with BetaShares on the Australian Finance Podcast, Australia's premier financial podcast, because there is great alignment in the long-term philosophy shared by both businesses. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Australian Finance Podcast. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Perla, the official brokerage platform of Rask.
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And of course, before you invest in anything, be sure to read the legal documents like the PDS and FSG. Thanks for watching this Rask podcast. Gem, hello, episode two. Excited for this one? What are we going to be talking about today?
In the first episode was a really good introduction into what they are or refresher if you have been investing in them for a while or you've been hearing about them. So it's a really good introduction. We covered lots of ideas and concepts around them and the analogy of the chocolates. This one we're diving deeper into who makes money from them. How do you make money from them?
more around, we talked about them as being a box and what might be in them. So we're going to dive into that a little bit deeper. What does index mean? Index and active are terms that people hear lots when they start looking into investing. So we're going to dive into that.
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Chapter 2: How do ETFs generate returns through capital growth and dividends?
And it actually says on the back of the box of favorites is that we do not guarantee that all units will be in this pack. Should it be necessary to leave out a particular unit at any time, it will be replaced by another of equal quality. Now, I do not think that Cherry Ribs and Turkish Delights are cut from the same cloth. So I would be very disappointed.
How this ties back into ETFs is, as Gem said, an ETF is transparent. You would see the box and it would be completely clear and you could determine what's inside it.
Yes, you don't have control. You don't get to choose to take things out of it or add more, but you have transparency to make that decision, to see what's in there first and then make the decision if you're going to buy it or not, which you don't have with this.
No, so you could imagine you go to a supermarket and there's ETFs on all the shelves or boxes of favorites and they're clear. You could see all the ones that have more of the cherry rinds or more of the picnics or more of the things that you care about and you could be like, that one, please.
So we'll be explaining in a very simple but important comparison in episode three, that's the next episode, we'll get five ETFs that look similar from the box but are different inside and we'll explain how to differentiate them. Okay. But for the purposes of this, how does it all work? How does it come together? Remember from episode one that in a box of favorites, you get a bit of everything.
That's what we would call an index, Gem. Now, I did actually ask you to bring some money in as well, and we've got the Ferrero Rocher's here. But rather than me go on a tangent and get stuck into these chocolates and dividing them up, what questions do you have at the outset of how they work?
So I thought we touched on in episode one why you would invest in a share or an ETF because we know the ETFs are a bucket of shares, really. So we talked about why you would invest in them first. For growth, to grow your wealth.
But I wanted to dive into how they actually make money because we didn't talk about, we touched on dividends and distributions, but I really want to dive into the elements that actually make or will help you grow your wealth if you're going to invest in these.
Okay, so we did discuss that each of the chocolates inside a box of favorites or inside the ETF represent different shares. So Cherry Ribs might be, this one in particular might be Commonwealth Bank. The one over here might be Woolworths and so on and so forth, right? So we know that's the representation.
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Chapter 3: What is the difference between passive and thematic investing in ETFs?
And that's very common. So that's how it kind of heals itself and keeps growing.
So we talked a lot about transparency being one of the major benefits, what we love about these. So the transparency comes in when you decide to buy it, because that can actually, so you're looking at what's in it at the time you buy it, but that can shift over time.
So one of the things that we haven't talked about, how do the chocolates get in the box? So if I go and buy the box, are the chocolates already there? How do they get in this box, right? So it's not like a box of favorites where you go there and all the chocolates have come out of that hopper thing and they're all just sitting in the shelf.
what happens is is when you go and buy it so when you reach on the shelf and you grab it a company behind the scenes goes yes jemma here's your box and they basically fill it up as you're giving them the money so they go and buy all of the little bits and pieces and go all right here's your box of chocolates and this is the part that people don't understand is how does it how the shares actually get in there and there's a company behind the scenes called a market maker
Now, we won't go super, super technical today, but this is an investment company that actually knows that the ETF exists. And when you go and click buy in your brokerage account, that company goes, of course, Gemma, here's your box. And they will go and collect all the shares and they will go and give that to the ETF provider. And they basically do a transaction behind the scenes.
And in the short version of it is that that process is also self-healing. Because what happens is, how much did you say you paid for this?
$15 on sale though.
So this was on sale. So you say that this box of favorites was $15, right? Yes. Now I did actually ask you for a bit of cash because I didn't have any cash in my wallet. Classic. Stitch up. Yeah. So I asked you for a $20 note. Now this is real. This $20 note's a bit crumpled up, but I think they call these lobsters. It's called a lobster.
It's called lobster as opposed to a pineapple, which is a $50 note.
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Chapter 4: What factors should you consider when assessing the risk of an ETF?
Yes. And so this is the great misconception of ETFs. What I'm about to say is what 0.01% of people actually understand about ETFs. And if you get a bit confused, that's okay. Just rewind 30 seconds, listen to it again. And hopefully I get this right when I explain it. I mentioned before that you could pay 20 bucks for this box of favorites.
This market maker that sits on the other side of your trade, they actually receive that and they give you what we call units, but let's say it's a box, right? They are the ones that go and collect all of these shares and then they hand them off to the ETF provider. And you're thinking, why would they do that? Dude, that sounds complicated. Like who's going to do that, right?
Well, the reason they do it is because at the moment that you click buy in your account, they instantly calculate how much it would cost for them to go and collect all of these chocolates or to go and collect all the shares. They instantly, in a matter of seconds, go bang. I can go and buy all of these shares for $19.50. But Jem is willing to pay $20 for them. Does that make sense? Yeah.
So now they've made 50 cents. Their whole process is like, wow, I could just bang, done. $19.50 for the chocolates. $20 is what Gemma's given me. I'm winning because I get 50 cents for virtually like a second's worth of work, right? So you might be like, wow, that sounds like a really good deal. Well, it's obviously very complicated, that process. It's obviously very complicated.
So let's quickly tie this in with an ETF. I said it was self-healing. How does that work? So in the case that the company that goes and collects all these chocolates for the ETF provider and for you and takes your money, 50 cents sounds like a lot of profit for them to make, right? It sounds like a lot of money.
So what happens and the reason that ETFs are not in a bubble is for this very simple fact. In the stock market, there's not just one market maker. There are many that operate. And they move through the stock market and they monitor what's happening with ETFs. So if you give me 20 bucks, I might go and say, okay, I can get these for $19.50.
But another market maker might say, I can get them for $19.70 and I'm going to cut in and I'm going to make sure that I get the shares before that other one does. So then you're getting a better deal, right? Because all of a sudden you're not paying me 50 cents or that other one 50 cents, you're paying 30 cents.
The bottom line is this, that because ETFs have become so popular now and there are more of these companies doing this job, Behind the scenes, there are more and more of these companies competing to get you a better deal because they can still make money even if it's just a couple of cents of profit that they're making. So that's a really good deal.
It's a complicated part of ETFs and it's the most complicated part. So I'd understand if you don't get it the first pass, That is totally fine. But all you need to understand is that as ETFs have got more popular, as a whole, they've actually become more efficient and probably safer. And so that's happened. Now, you're going to ask me about some other ways to divide this box, I think.
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Chapter 5: How does index tracking function within an ETF?
If that's the case, that's what we call a thematic ETF because you're saying, I like Australian shares or chocolates, but I only like ones with red. So that's your choice.
So what's an example of a red ETF?
Yeah, what would be an example? Let's say like the ATEC ETF from BetaShares. BetaShares is the sponsor of the Australian Finance Podcast for Disclosure. ATEC, A-T-E-C, is an ETF that only invests in Australian technology companies. So we've got Australia as one of the filters or categories. Within Australia, which are the technology companies? That is the example of this style of ETF.
It's not the whole of the market or every chocolate, that would be an index ETF. It is what we call a thematic ETF. You'll probably hear us talk about that on the show with the guys from BetaShares quite regularly. That would be an example of that. You can also divide it in many different ways. It doesn't have to be the color of the wrapper or the sector like technology.
It could be which shares pay big dividends. Which shares have grown fast in terms of profit? Which shares are the biggest just in size? Which shares are the smallest? You can divide it up. That's why there are over 400 ETFs now. And a lot of them do different things. Some of them are similar, but that's how they work. And that's how you can kind of, again, you can't choose the box.
Sorry, you can't choose what goes in the box, but you can choose which box you buy. And that's, you might want, maybe favorites after listening to this episode, Cadbury will be like... Those two on that podcast, they had a really good idea. Red wrappers in a box. Let's just do favorites with red.
It's a hub. No, sorry. It's a hopper, apparently. They can't do it. It's random. So very importantly, you can start out very basic and have a very broad...
ETF you can have something that's got a little bit of everything in it or you can really dial down into the thing that you actually want to be investing in not so much as the direct share you would just literally go and buy direct shares in that case but if you wanted a basket you could add the filters that you said those extra layers to make sure that this is the area you want to be investing
That would mean ethical investing as well as one of those layers. How would that come into play with something like an ETF?
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Chapter 6: What are the common beginner mistakes when investing in ETFs?
This is how ETFs work. Right, so we've got this box of favorites. It's Cadbury favorites. This would be like saying BetaShares Australia, right? We have BetaShares Australia 200. It actually says to you what it does just by the name. BetaShares is the company that's responsible for it. That's the provider. Australia is where it invests. 200, it invests in 200 shares.
So if you actually just look at the names of ETFs, you can figure out what they do.
Start to.
Yeah. The ticker symbols can be random. Even though gold invests in gold, it doesn't necessarily work that way. The kind of ASX in Australia, the Australian Stock Exchange, sets the rules of those types of things. But just reading the name alone will tell you so much about it, Jim.
Yes. Great. So that's the code that we use to actually identify them and buy them. It's kind of like their barcode. Yes. Yes, it does. Great. So we dived in to you can have an ethical investment. You can have one that's just Australian shares, one that is thematic. How does risk profiling come into this?
Okay. So risk profiling is if we step back, it's good to know how to bucket different things. So it'd be like if you had on the box of favorites, this one is spicy, this one is not spicy. Not that those really make sense for chocolate. Mild, medium, hot. But when I go to Nando's, I see I'm always the mild one. Maybe the lemon and herb if I'm not very adventurous, but I am not the very hot person.
It's the same with investing. There are some ETFs that are much higher risk And there are some that are much less risk. You just don't know it by looking straight at it. You kind of have to understand what it invests in. And so that's like, so for example, shares, we know shares tend to go up and down.
But if you were to invest in, say, like a cash ETF, which is really just term deposits, that's not really going up and down. It's kind of stable. So that would be less spicy. The more spicy would be shares, overseas shares, crypto ETFs, Bitcoin ETFs. They're very spicy on the spicy scale.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 7: How can you read and understand ETF names and tickers?
Gemma, always fun. Great. Thank you. Thanks for watching this episode of the podcast. If you want to hear more from us, you can get daily videos and podcasts on Rask YouTube channel. Or if you want to enroll in a free course on investing, property, business, money, you name it, you can join over 34,000 other students and enroll in a free course on the Rask website.
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