iNAV and Intraday Indicative Value

A mutual fund only prices itself once a day, after the close, using its official net asset value (NAV). An ETF trades all day on an exchange, so investors need some running sense of what it's actually worth right now — that's the job of iNAV, the intraday indicative value. Exchanges (or a designated calculation agent) recompute it roughly every 15 seconds during the trading day, using the ETF's last published basket of holdings and current market prices for each component, and broadcast the resulting estimate over the market data feed.

iNAV exists to help authorized participants and traders spot when the ETF's market price has drifted away from the value of what it actually holds — a gap that gets arbitraged away through the creation/redemption mechanism, which is what keeps ETF prices tracking their underlying baskets so tightly in normal conditions.

iNAV is an estimate, not a guarantee: it's built from the last disclosed basket (which can be a day stale for some structures) and from quoted, not necessarily executable, prices for each holding, so during fast markets or for ETFs holding illiquid or foreign assets, iNAV can lag the ETF's true fair value noticeably. It's a useful reference point, not a tradable price in its own right.