How to find underlying value of an Exchange Traded Fund?

I have recently become interested in Exchange Traded Funds. I was wondering how one might go about calculating the underlying value of the assets held by the fund and where the information needed to do so would be acquired.

I am not talking about the assets I hold but the assets held by the fund.

I know basically how to do it but don't know where to get the information.

This is called the Net Asset Value (NAV) and can usually be found on the funds web site. For exchange-traded funds, NAV should be almost identical to the market price. For closed end funds, it can fluctuate by a fair amount.

price x number of shares - just like a stock

what are you talking about? ETF';s are owned by major investment firms (Barclay's Vanguard etc) which may be found at their web sites but there is a net asset value on each fund. ETF's (If you get the right ones) are the way to go.

I'm not sure what you are asking for. Is it that you want to check each stock held in the ETF for debt, cash flow, revenue, etc to find what an investment bank/private equity firm would value the company for a buyout? That seems like an awful lot of number crunching. Can't help you on that. If you just want the net asset value of the holdings all together to see if the ETF is trading at a discount or premium, then check out etfconnect.com.