It was possible for investors to manage their own money before the invention of ETFs, in the same way it was possible to fly before Ryanair. It could be done, but you had to be rich and you had to be motivated.  Exchange-traded funds are a type of fund that trades on a stock exchange. The unique advantage of this arrangement is that ETFs can be bought by anyone with access to the exchange.  Before ETFs, funds had to be bought directly from the fund provider. This wasn’t always possible, because there were only so many fund providers with whom…