document called the Trust Indenture. This document is drafted by the Sponsor of the fund, and names the Trustee and the Evaluator. By US law, the Sponsor and the Trustee may not be the same. The sponsor selects and assembles the securities to be included in the fund. The trustee keeps the securities, maintains unitholder records, and performs all accounting and tax reporting for the portfolio. The largest issuer of UITs is First Trust Portfolios. Other sponsors include Incapital, SmartTrust, Invesco Unit Trusts, Millington Securities, Advisors Asset Management and Guggenheim Funds. Most large brokerage firms (such as Merrill Lynch and LPL Financial) sell UITs created by these sponsors. Tax perspective From a tax perspective, UITs offer a shelter from the unrealized capital gains taxes typical inside of a mutual fund. Because individual UITs are assembled and purchased for specific periods of time, the cost basis consists of the initial purchase price of the securities held in the trust. A mutual fund, on the other hand, taxes the individual based on the entire previous tax year, regardless of the date purchased. An investor could, for example, purchase a mutual fund in October, absorb a loss during the last quarter of the year, and still be taxed on capital gains within the fund, depending on the overall performance of the underlying securities from January 1 of the current year. A UIT avoids such potential tax consequence by assembling an entirely new "investment" for each individual investor. Some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are technically classified as UITs: however, ETFs usually do not have set portfolios (they are either managed or update automatically to follow an index), and they can have lifetimes of over 100 years. For example, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust is scheduled to terminate January 21, 2118, and the PowerShares QQQ Trust is scheduled to terminate March 4, 2124. See also Collective investment scheme Mutual fund Stockbroker Brokerage firm References Investment funds Unit