Can you lose money in etfs?

These funds can be traded at high premiums, and if you buy an ETF that trades at a significant premium, you should expect to lose money when you sell. In general, ETFs do what they say they do and they do it well. But to say that there are no risks is to ignore reality. Overall, the authors of the study state that “specialized ETFs lose about 30 percent of their value over a five-year period after their launch.