In January of 1993 the American Stock Exchange (u201cAMEXu201d) launched the first ETF in the U.S. using the brand name u201cSPDRsu201d. This name was given to the product by Nate Most and Standard and Pooru2019s. Nate Most an ETF pioneer, was a commodities futures trader who would often deal with commodity depository receipts which represent the ownership of a defined unit of commodities within approved warehouses. Nate decided that the product would be benchmarked to the most followed equity index in the U.S.: the S&P 500. By combining the properties of Commodities Futures Trading Commission (u201cCFTCu201d) depository receipts and of equities, the Standard and Pooru2019s Depository Receipt (or SPDR) was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (u201cSECu201d) in 1993.The first ETFs were created as a helpful tool for the 600,000+ registered securities representatives.The first index funds have been launched in the 1970s, for example Vanguard formed the Vanguard Index Trust in 1975.By the 1990s RIAs have been trying to give exposure to the performance of the S&P 500 for a portion of their client's assets. The choice would have been either to buy an index fund that was tracking the performance of the S&P 500 or for certain managers who had different ideas on the future sector performances the choice was to buy 500 stocks.Sector PerformanceSector WeightingsSource: Bespoke Investment GroupSource: Siblis ResearchThe S&P 500 uses a market cap weighting calculation methodology which allowed to fully capture and ride the dot com bull and bust as we entered the new milleniaSource: Bespoke Investment GroupState Street came up with the idea of offering their SPDRs one for each sector allowing investment advisers that were interested to recreate the S&P 500 using different sector weightings to now pay only 10 transaction fees (one for each SPDR) instead of 500 transaction fees.Et voilau2026