The 2024 ETF Halftime Report - podcast episode cover

The 2024 ETF Halftime Report

Jun 20, 202437 min
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Episode description

So far, this has been a banner year for exchange-traded funds. The S&P 500 is at record highs, inflows keep soaring and investors are taking more risk. BlackRock’s Bitcoin offering even became the most successful ETF launch ever.

On this episode, Eric Balchunas and Joel Weber discuss the most noteworthy themes and trends of the past six months with Todd Rosenbluth and Cinthia Murphy of VettaFi. They review what the inflows reveal, how various sectors are performing and which products and issuers have been the biggest winners and losers. They also talk about what to watch for in the second half of the year.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Walcaner Schillions.

Speaker 2

I'm Joe Webber and I'm Eric Belchunas.

Speaker 3

Eric, it's that time of year, not that I've been counting or anything, but we are halfway.

Speaker 2

It's water park season, Joel.

Speaker 1

It's these communities come in.

Speaker 2

It's summer splash plex in Mount Laurel shout out.

Speaker 3

That also means that we have a pretty good sample size that we can take stock of twenty twenty four and see what's been happening in the ETF industry.

Speaker 2

Isn't it crazy? It's like it's basically the year's basically half over.

Speaker 1

I mean, this is it's all downhill.

Speaker 2

Time flies so fast.

Speaker 1

You reach the top and now it's all downhill it.

Speaker 2

Is, and we get focused on a couple of things. All of a sudden you look up and you're like, okay, what what actually happens?

Speaker 1

So the market's been up, that's been one.

Speaker 2

Yeah, honestly, that's made time go faster because it's not different. It's like the same old kind.

Speaker 1

Of interest rates didn't come down.

Speaker 2

Yeah, what did anything happen?

Speaker 1

No, it's just like here we are a couple of months later.

Speaker 2

Besides the viccornyts I've been I've been living on Planet Crypto for like the last.

Speaker 3

Okay, so we've done this before. But halftime reports we assess some stuff that's gone down, maybe a little sneak peak of a few things to come take stock of everything.

Speaker 1

We've got some guests we do.

Speaker 2

We've got two of my favorite people from Vitafi, Todd Rosenbluth and Cynthia Murphy, both of whom I would consider og ETF analysts. They both at some point worked at ETF dot com, which was formerly Index Universe, and that to me was where I got inspired to even get in the industry. So it's always nice to have them on.

Speaker 3

Todd regular Cynthia's first time on the podcast, this time on Trillions Halftime Report. Todd, Cynthia, wocome to Trillions.

Speaker 4

Thanks for having us on the show.

Speaker 5

I'm so glad to be back.

Speaker 3

Before we talk about the play of the first half, do you want to set the scene here a little bit.

Speaker 1

I don't know Cynthia yet. Yeah, you don't know Todd from previous recording.

Speaker 2

You know Todd very well, but you kind of know Cynthia. I bring her up once every six months when I bring up the story of how when there was the Pundit's panel competition. I was robbed because I did uranium, which is now like a jillion percent since then, and the winner was Cynthia Murphy.

Speaker 1

So I know you by your legend.

Speaker 2

Yes, you know I bring every six months.

Speaker 1

What was the one that you beat him with?

Speaker 4

TDV Tech Dividends front pro Share.

Speaker 1

Yeah, now you know, I might have won the long game on that one.

Speaker 4

I'll just say that everyone who lost that day, because I was the newbie doing for the first time, has been saying that they were robbed. It's kind of a cliche at this point.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Look, I'm just in favor of Eric getting beat so you know whatever, whatever.

Speaker 5

She crushed it, she crushed it that day though.

Speaker 2

I think everyone tried too hard that day and Cynthia just was so organic and natural and it just played well because I didn't come in second either, which is so it's worse than I even say.

Speaker 1

Okay, so Eric, how are we going to do this? Evaluate the first half of play.

Speaker 2

Let's start with as classes roll, so you look at something like equities. They took in two hundred and eleven billion. So while it's down from like the second half of twenty twenty three, and it has peaked it. It once took in three hundred and fifty billion, so that's the record. But I would say two hundred and eleven is probably like the fourth best half on record.

Speaker 1

Wait, it was three fifty and a half or a full year.

Speaker 2

That's for a half a year, Okay, Yeah, So if you look at all halves, if you compare this half to every half in existence, this would be the one, two three fourth best half ever.

Speaker 5

Believe.

Speaker 6

I mean, we've seen in the time in the recent past where the equity market climbed higher and ETF investors were not participating. After the strong year we had in twenty twenty three, I think it's really encouraging to see money continue to go into equity ETFs, and in particular some of the broad acid allocation oriented products that investors' advisors keep embracing, the ETF rapper for the five hundred, for the Nasdaq one hundred, and so forth.

Speaker 2

This is a good point you're bringing up, actually, because last year this time we called the FOMO drought, stocks were up at the flows weren't there. So this time last year equities took an one hundred and ten billion, So one hundred billion more this year. Clearly investors are getting in. You know why there was a FOMO drought though money market funds were yielding five percent. Seems like people are like, well, I'd rather have fifteen twenty percent

equity returns than five percent in money market. So that seems to be the difference this year.

Speaker 4

Yeah, but isn't within that equity sleeve. Isn't a lot of it going to international equity, which I think it's a little actually speaks more about risk off than risk on. It's that search for value, which I think has been interesting. A lot of money has gone for We always talk about every year being the year of diversification into international, and we are actually seeing that.

Speaker 2

This year international did take in its fair share. But US still rules for sure, but in portion a lot of countries and regions are having all time highs. We don't it doesn't break through in the US media because whatever you're doing in another country out there, the QUES is beating you.

Speaker 6

It's like well and money and yeah, and money's going into the Q the QS and QQQM in particular.

Speaker 5

I know we're gonna get to the bottom up.

Speaker 2

We on our team sometimes we like how much sell side research could be summed up with by QQQ like it. Honestly, it's it's really much easier than people make it out to be. I mean, just this index is just lethal. I mean, what's the point of investing anywhere else? Troll?

Speaker 3

Well, you could do mag right, just the magnificent seven. How does that compare?

Speaker 2

That is interesting? By the way, are you surprised by this that the ques are mostly Magnificent seven stocks? I believe it's like fifty percent of the rest. But the round hills, like, oh, why don't we just come out with a magnificent seven cret cream of the crop and it's got like a ton of money. Yeah, it just seems like it's like, really, it was that simple.

Speaker 6

You focus on those seven companies, eight stocks that's performed well, even if a couple of them have dropped off. But yeah, we're just excited to see the equity ETF adoption, both actively managed equity ETFs which are quite strong, and even the broad index space products as well.

Speaker 3

Okay, what about fixed income because it's always been like, this is always the year of the fixed income ETF.

Speaker 2

It's you know, it's always the year of something, isn't it. I mean, yeah, well, you know, you're an editorial, you get everything like you.

Speaker 1

Got three years running of like this is the year.

Speaker 2

We doing out look for next year. I mean, anyway, it's getting rair until in July. Okay, so let's look at fixed income eighty nine billion. That would be about the sixth best half ever. But I will say if you look at a chart of fixed income flows, they used to average forty thirty five billion a year a

half a year. Sorry, Now they're averaging one hundred you know, ninety to one hundred and ten billion, So they around twenty twenty around the pandemic, they just kind of went into this other gear and they've lived up there.

Speaker 1

Now.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 6

I mean, well, we saw adoption of fixed income ETFs as the go to vehicle for institutional investors.

Speaker 5

Who favored the liquidity.

Speaker 6

But you got to even put this year in perspective because coming in we had the overall industry expected multiple rate cuts. We haven't had any yet as the time we're recording this, and probably going to have one maybe by the end of the year. That's just a different environment. But it just shows that investors have rotated, they've been comfortable taking on interest rate risk or taking it off but using the ETFs as the vehicle of choice.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I would just sad. Just this morning, actually, I was talking to the guy who does our vetafy pro data analytics tool and codes all that stuff and he runs all the portfolios, and he was telling me, like, all the behavioral data shows that by far people are playing around and trying to figure out how to build equities even alternatives, and that fixed income is still that after thought. Advisors are still like not quite sure what

to do about it. So I think there may be still be like you know, early innings just going for easy button choices because they're not quite sure how to position at this point.

Speaker 1

I love the easy button Eric.

Speaker 2

I know he loves that, but by the way, he thinks there should be an ETF, which makes it's a logical thought where it's just everything in the entire world in one ETF. You can just hit by and you.

Speaker 1

Own it easy, but take her easy.

Speaker 2

The problem is advisors want to be the deciders. It's like you're putting advisors out of busess with that roll.

Speaker 5

That's but it's a great self directed tool.

Speaker 2

Yeah, so one thing about fixed income that's interesting free By the way, thanks for listening, we can create the ind they have fixed income active managers are still in demand, and so yes, there's some active fixed income ETFs, but the active fixed income mutual funds have taken in money so like bond managers. I think it's because it's like there's so many bonds. The element of time is like

makes it more like chess than checkers. And I think advisors still are willing to give money to a bond manager and that will always I think, put somewhat of a lid on fixed income relative to equities in the ETF wrapper.

Speaker 6

Yeah, but we are seeing the products that people have gone to and the managers that they've gone to for years in the mutual fun world are now available and offering products in the ETF world. Capital Group has had a lot of success with active fixed income ETFs.

Speaker 5

PIMPO has been there the longest.

Speaker 6

Blackrock, I know we're going to talk about individual products, but Blackrock has had success with the bink ETF that's run by Rick Reader not even or just past the year and is crushing it in terms of asset gathering. We are seeing more and more active management within the fixed income space.

Speaker 2

Yeah, no, it's got everything and corporate did the best of every sector in bonds this year, and treasuries down a little bit from last year. They switched places this year as again investors taking on more risk. And then you know what did really well that was kind of introduced for recently is colo ETFs collateralized loan obligations, which everybody kind of gets memories of two thousand and eight. But I've talked to some of these people. They came

on ETF. It's not as bad as it's not as risky as you think that JAW is now ten billion dollars this the janis. Yeah, that crazy that we got to have a segment called they grow Up So Fast. JAW would be a great candidate.

Speaker 6

Yeah, that's Janis Henderson putting their best in the ETF structure and just tremendous demand. It just shows that the ETF rapper works for many investment styles well.

Speaker 4

And just to go back to the memory of the CLOS is, we hope they don't grow up too fast. We hope we know what we're doing this time around, right.

Speaker 2

Fair point, Yeah, you don't want clos to grow up too fast?

Speaker 1

Right?

Speaker 3

Okay, I want to talk about another asset class. And we've gone through the usual ones. What about alternatives?

Speaker 2

Yeah, so alternative is a thirty five billion. That would be the biggest year everag role by like fivefold. But the thing is we put in the bitcoin ETFs into alternative, so that's why that number is so big. If we carve that out, alternative would be having an average year. But the bitcoin ETFs all told are you know, fifteen billions about between all the new ones that came out and then even ibit has taken in a little bit, So that is a tremendous start. We've talked about on

the show many times. But alternative overall is just pretty small like hedge fund style ETFs, so that number is a little skewed. But also interesting is commodities outflows this year, so how much five billion dollars? So that's also interesting is that the bitcoin ETFs cleaned up gold seeing outflows even though that the price is up. That was an interesting combo there with the.

Speaker 1

Cashion on the real gold and put it in the digital gold.

Speaker 2

It seems like that's what people did, but you know, we don't can't ever tell what exactly what they're doing, but that seems like what happened.

Speaker 6

Yeah, but we're hearing it vetify from advisors that are now heading into the middle of the year. They're looking towards alternative investments. They're not only looking to crypto, they're looking to gold. We had verified would consider covered call ETFs as perhaps within the alternative space that are options based strategies from NEOs and JP Morgan among others. We're seeing advisors investors looking for something else besides stock and bond exposure using ETFs.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and I think twenty twenty two, which was the really bad year, the sixty and the forty both went down, and since that moment, people have said, Okay, I'm open to something else that can hedge the sixty forty. So I think that's where Active actually comes into play. Active, by the way, having another big year. I think they've taken in like twenty to thirty percent of the flows.

Speaker 5

Again, and not just one category. We've seen it for categories.

Speaker 6

We've seen it for equity, and we've seen it for fixed income, which is just encourage.

Speaker 1

What is it at this point? What's driving that? Do you think? Todd?

Speaker 6

I think the fact that we have supply is helping that we have some of these leading asset managers Hero Price and Fidelity Capital Group that I mentioned earlier. That's playing a role. But given the market volatility, and certainly in fixed income where I certainly don't know the next move of the FED, the average investor may not know that. Either they're comfortable turning to active management to get that expertise, but they're also coming to active management for stock specific

ideas as well. We've seen some success and I know when we get to the leader board we're going to see some active products there.

Speaker 4

Yeah, but I do think the branding power that has stepped into the space has made a difference. Because if you have to sit in front of a client and explain why did you pick this active manager I never heard of and it's not working, it's a really tough conversation.

Speaker 1

The star power helps.

Speaker 4

When you have that star power really helps.

Speaker 2

And also we dug into the numbers of active it's a little more nuanced than just oh, the return of the stock picker. A lot of the active is the cover qull atfs, which you could argue is people aren't buying for the manager, they're buying for the actual income. Then there's a chunk of active into like DFA, but it's equal to the amount coming out of its mutual funds, so there might be some just transfer.

Speaker 5

Some of that.

Speaker 6

But again fidality bondecounts I had already. Bond eef has been popular this year.

Speaker 2

The other thing is the fees finally got low inactive, they finally got below like the twenty basis point all important line and then and the other ones are below forty. As long as you're below forty and you're active, you have a fighting chance for organic growth in my opinion.

Speaker 3

Which by the way, just back to bitcoin, where did they come out at and where did they end up at?

Speaker 1

From a few standpoint, Well.

Speaker 2

I remember the arc was first I think there was seventy five in a prospectus, and then Fidelite came in thirty nine. Those are the first two and then boom. There was like at twenty four period where Invesco was like, Okay, we're twenty five, but we have a waiver, and then BlackRock's like, oh, we're twenty five or something like that. Once Blackrock went in twenty five, I think they went in.

Everybody had to get real close to that because you can't be too farway from Blackrock if someone won't buy your stuff, so then Blackrock I think then in introduce the waiver after the dust subtle droll. All of them were between twenty and thirty basis points. I think Franklin actually went one lower to nineteen. And that's where we're at,

which I'm surprised to get. Well, not yet right now, there's still the zero over You're right, there's waivers and stuff, but I don't like to count the waiver too much because it runs out, but the fee behind it is still cheap, because sometimes there's waivers and the fee is expensive behind it, but in this case, the fee behind it isn't that bad either, which again speaks to the terrodome aspect of the US market, where in other countries

and other vehicles, these bitcoin funds are over one percent, so this is really monumentally cheap.

Speaker 4

Yeah, but I'm curious to see how they unwind all the waivers. I know they're specific, you know, dead end dates on prospectuses and stuff. But you know, we've seen that it's really hard to go from zero up, so you end up getting a bunch of extensions and you know, waiver to infinity. So I'm curious to see when when the unwinding comes, where the reaction is.

Speaker 1

The revenge of total Yeah, alright, Act two.

Speaker 2

Okay, so we're gonna go tickers. So is the leaderboard top five inflows of the year number one? You can guess it VU, yes, Well, guess the number twenty five bill? Nope? Higher forty yes? Uh? Forty billion is ridiculous. Okay, just so you know, the record for a calendar year is fifty So VU is already christion it. Yeah, I mean, what a monster this thing is. The next one is sixteen billion.

Speaker 1

Joel, who's that hold on? Cynthia is gonna guess IVV?

Speaker 2

Yes, good job, See told.

Speaker 1

You it wasn't that hard. It's like the other It is.

Speaker 5

Very very well.

Speaker 2

It's kind of a tie. There's a tie for second. IVV is one another one.

Speaker 1

It was the other one, Todd.

Speaker 5

It's I BIT right, that's right.

Speaker 6

So so black Rock has the second and the third largest EV.

Speaker 2

It's the figure, the actual figure sixteen point nine, sixteen point six. So IVV, I B I T But that tells you vou is on another planet. Then you have IVV and I BIT and then four and five you guys can guess that that's a tougher one. We already mentioned on this program.

Speaker 1

Just I'm putting my money on Cynthia again.

Speaker 2

Oh pressure, the ticker was already said on Yes.

Speaker 1

How much did the ques take in twelve.

Speaker 2

Point nine billions? So we'll run up to thirteen and number five will run up to thirteen and you can get this. Come on, I would go with fidelities. No, that's seven, okay, this this is always in the top five. It's always lingering. It's never one or two, but it's always like five, four through six. This is a stud ETF. It just slowly hoovers up money. This isoring. This is Vanguard Total Stock Market. That's it VTI. So that's your top five.

Speaker 6

You don't like it when I bring the boring ETFs to the top.

Speaker 4

The problem is no fixed income in there.

Speaker 2

No six is agg but you're right. The top five is all stocks and bitcoin, which is in my opinion, risk gone. But yeah, that's I'm not too surprised by this. I think I bit taking in sixteen point six billion as a surprise to anybody. That's a ton of money for a new ETF. And the queues obviously going strong, even though there's a cheaper option with QQQM, which is twelve.

Speaker 1

Okay, do you think ibit can maintain this pace?

Speaker 2

No, James and I have a calculation that the bitcoiny tips will net ten to fifteen billion in one year. They're already right about fifteen billion, so they've already gotten to our ceiling. But remember, things can happen. Bitcoin could have you know, it's very volatile. But I we're probably going to be proven wrong. But let me give you this stat. We just ran I bit touched twenty billion

in assets the other day barely. It's down in nineteen point eight I think right now, but it touched twenty billion. It reached twenty billion dollars in one hundred and it's fifty seven days. The next fastest ETF to reach twenty billion dollar? Do did it in nine hundred and like forty days? Can you get the ticker? Well, I would think it's GLD no cut, so it's a more recent one.

Speaker 6

Oh that's Jeppie then yes, okay, I was trying to think of who was recent.

Speaker 2

So anyway, this thing is breaking all kinds of records.

Speaker 5

I just think it's impressive.

Speaker 6

Well, first of all, VU on its own, that's going to hit the record, as you mentioned, is impressive. We've got those two IVV and VU and SPLG, which is the stage street low cost ETF that's also punching above its weight and gathering assets. I just come back to, it's just so exciting that this is how people are starting to get exposure to ETFs is through the S and P five hundred, and then we're seeing the next wave that's narrower slices or bitcoin or what have you.

Speaker 2

You know, it's interesting. And eighthan look at this last year the percentage of flows going into the S and P five hundred ETFs. There's now four of them. We got an spl and they're all again almost free. But it's it's got to be over a quarter of the flows. So even though we talk about these niche things there's cheap Beta is just the real deal. It's just Hoover's in cash hand over for Yeah.

Speaker 4

But the Bitcoin is is ah object, Yeah, I mean super shiny, and in the case of the success of the launch, part of it is you know, oh the ATF repper, that's awesome. We're all super you know protfs here, But part of it is Bitcoin is a new asset so can we repeat that unless somebody comes up with a new acid, I don't think we'll ever see something like that again. I don't even think the Ether ETFs would be the same same phenomenon. I think, for one, we're all tired. It all happened in the same year.

I don't think we can take much more or you're.

Speaker 2

Gonna get to You know what Ethan said today when when someone filed for a Ether spot covered call each other, Yeah, no, make it stop. It's never gonna stop anyway. One more thing on the I agree with you. Ether maybe takes twenty percent of what bitcoin has. But Joel, what she just said is something that I've been trying to explain to people who might not love the fact that I've gotten so into it. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity or situation. As an analyst, I wasn't really around.

I just started covering ets when GLD came out, so it wasn't really aware of how big that was. And this is the biggest new asset class situation since gold. So definitely again once every twenty years.

Speaker 1

Maybe I just want to put that on record. You think four billion for Ether? Yeah like that? That seems fair, right or over under five you're going to take the under.

Speaker 2

I would take the under any year.

Speaker 4

Ah me too.

Speaker 1

I say.

Speaker 4

The closest to this experience that I remember is when DXJ came out and we were all going nuts and we're currency hadgi yes and by comparison.

Speaker 2

By the way, that was the Remember that was one of our trivia questions. That was the last THETF to win the flow crown. That wasn't black Rock or Vanguard. Yeah, that cool stat that is I think you might have gotten it, Todd.

Speaker 5

I got it right and and I won that.

Speaker 2

By the way, we need a new bet. We were thinking what can we bet on? So we'll see what we come up with.

Speaker 1

The We're not.

Speaker 2

Done yet, all right now. The outflows which is interesting, okay, GBTC negative eighteen billion, that is a bomb. What an unlocked There's a whole can of worms there.

Speaker 3

Spy is because all the other bitcoin ETFs took in inflows.

Speaker 2

Well we no, but like FTX had some legal money in there that went out that didn't go to the bigcoin ETFs. There was some other lawsuits I would call these like unnatural operational money that left I think half of it the other half probably found a cheaper ETF. Okay, but definitely that is just unbelievable. No ETF has ever seen that much money come out, and that short of.

Speaker 1

What was that figure?

Speaker 2

Eighteen billion? Okay, and the next under five months and number two number two is SPY. Now here's the thing with SPY, so negative eleven billion. We just talked about how great s andp P five hundred ETFs are. SPY took in forty billion in December or something like that, so some of this was people going into do tax loss harvesting. So I think some of Spy's money is the leaving what went in December. So again i'd call that operational.

Speaker 1

But it can't get any cheaper like the others can.

Speaker 2

That's the thing though, is there's generally a headwind with SPY because it is more expensive.

Speaker 1

And yet qqq has the same problem with these investment trust structures.

Speaker 2

I also think that QQQM still isn't liquid enough to get the trading money yet, whereas IVV and V were actually getting so liquid that even a hedge fund will be like, I'm fine with the liquidity there. So when QQQM gets a little more liquidity, I think q's are going to be in the same boat as Spy Number three is a fascinating small caps IWM. How about ever, it's supposed to be the year of small caps a lot, it never happens.

Speaker 6

Yeah, I mean, well, the interest rate environment plays a role in that that we haven't seen cuts that would have been conducive for small caps. And yes, there's cheaper alternatives for getting small cap exposure, whether it's tied to the S and P six hundred from I shares or a stage street. The stage Street small Cap BTF has been actually quite popular as of late, but there's other alternatives in IWM.

Speaker 3

So far, we've checked three year of favorites, international fixed income and small.

Speaker 2

Caps and small caps. There's another issue whereas companies more and more, they ipo larger, so it's like the small they don't even get to be small caps for a little bit and get a little of that juice. So I think they're almost like there's a would you call that like a secular issue with the IPOs now, it's almost like when Kobe Bryant went right to the NBA, it was in no college at all that you can't do that anymore. It's one and done, but you have

to go into a college now. But small caps, the IPOs go right to the large cap area now, so small caps I think also suffer because they don't have any star power, right and if you are a star, you quickly go up the ranks to large caps quickly, so you're left with a lot of junk. That's why CALF I think did so well. It's small cap free cash list, so at least you're with quality cash generating small caps and that is a was a monster hit.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 2

ETF of the Year. By the way, in the ETF awards, remember okay, but you got one more I do and us m V is the fourth most outflows. Remember that's the ice shares minimum volatility. This was the bell of the ball right for about five years back then everybody was into minim minimum volatility. Local Athan has a theory on this is that you know the buffer ets which

target your outcome perfectly. They've kind of stolen the thunder of low vall because if you're a boomer and you want the stock market but with less risk the boomer, the buffer ETFs actually gets you more targeted outcome. Then you can predict with a low vall. What do you think of that theory.

Speaker 6

I see the merit of that, and certainly the buffer and defined outcome and controlling that plays a role. But I think also we've seen a rotation from menwhile to Quality and so the I shares Quality ETF QUA L saw it strong net inflows earlier in the year, and I think that's probably some of that might be a model rotation out of menvall and into quality.

Speaker 4

Plus VALL hasn't been that high anyway this year, you know, so maybe we're not that worried.

Speaker 2

Yeah, no, I I those are definitely obviously good answers, and I think though the buffer, there's just more competition now for like, hey, I want the market, but I don't I want less risk diet market or something like that. And minvall used to have the whole, the.

Speaker 6

Whole, uh yeah, I mean even Calamos that just launched the one hundred percent downside Protection ETF strecture Protection, thank you, Structure Protection ETF has seen strong demand out of the gate for these two new products.

Speaker 1

Okay, pack three.

Speaker 2

All right, let's look at issuers. Okay, Number one, no shocker here, Vanguard with one hundred and three billion Okay, so that's a third of all the money. Just like a giant vacuum cleaner. Number two is a vacuum cleaner. What a Pennsylvania vacuum cleaner? Yeah, Keystone State. I don't understand. We're talking about Allentown. It's kind of visual some manufacturing jobs. I don't know that Pennsylvania vacuum cleaners are really good.

Speaker 1

It's like American maid Yeah.

Speaker 2

I mean, also it's interesting Vanguard just rolls on. I just don't see anything that really takes away from the reputational inertia they have, not to mention, again, everybody loves cheap beta, and this is before they've really rolled in any of their active strategies with full with you know, especially on the equity side, they could easily keep leading by almost two lengths if they were to fold in some of their active strategies in my opinion.

Speaker 6

Yeah, I mean, if and when they bring more of the best of Vanguard into the ETF structure, I would agree with you. But we've even seen bn d X, the Vanguard International bond ETF be very popular this year. You get, of course, what it says international bonds to broadly diversify, not just equities, but also overseas that's been hoovering up money as well.

Speaker 2

And what do you think of the new CEO? So they just hired Blackrocks Salem Ramsey who used to be the CEO, the head of Blackrocks Global ETF business. It's interesting he's gonna he's a little more dynamic. I think we're the.

Speaker 4

Person he the first one who wasn't internally bred so outside.

Speaker 2

I think that helps, right, Do you think that helps or hurts?

Speaker 6

I think it helps and that you can bring in a fresh perspective as opposed to just the Vanguard way of doing things. But I think he's going to keep a lot of the same thing as the same and we'll see just an evolution bringing the best. Blackrock has been increasingly bringing active managers like Rick Reader into the ETF space.

Speaker 5

I think we're going to see more of that from Vanguard.

Speaker 3

How does one hundred and three billion compare with previous issuer.

Speaker 2

Performance, Well, I'd say it's largely on part because if you look at the last ten years, Vanguard's taken in about nine hundred million dollars a day. There's two hundred and fifty training days in a year, so they're at one hundred and three billion. If they go to two hundred and six billion by the end of the year, that's about eight hundred million, So they're just about on pace.

Speaker 6

I totally would have done that using market share numbers in my head of what their percentage of their market share is versus the market share they're pulling in. You were going nine hundred million a day and trying to do that by two hundred and fifty business.

Speaker 5

The reason the.

Speaker 2

Reason I do that is because that is a crazy stat not nine hundred million a day for like a couple months when you got hot, but like a decade. Think about that. Certain firms are happy to be nine hundred million total.

Speaker 4

Okay, So, so far as we talk about changing leadership, what it means for the future a Vanguard is is Vanguard's reach multi generational? Is this like younger, different generations of investors coming in and they're all buying Vanguard or is this just the existing you know, our generation just putting more of their money within Vanguard.

Speaker 2

It's a good question. And the people who are at Vanguard are if they came in early, they're they're rich now, they're boomers. They have almost all the money in America. So it's a good point. I think translating Vanguard's message to younger people will be a challenge. But at the end of the day, once you like settle down from like your gambling, like meme stocks and all that, I

know young people like to get lottery ticket investing. Once you kind of get a little older and like you have more pressure for money, I just think you're going to find your way to the benefits of a low cost index fund. It's just natural progression.

Speaker 1

What is the number for issue or number two?

Speaker 2

It's Blackrock at sixty five billion, so a little over half only of what Vanguard has.

Speaker 5

But still a strong a strong year.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we talked about half a year and it's yes, yes.

Speaker 5

So we've talked about IBIT already. We talked about IVV.

Speaker 6

They've had some success. They've had success with active management as well. They made some model allocation changes. So d y n F, which is the Blackrock Equity Factor Rotation ETF. That's among the more popular ETFs for the year. Bank I mentioned earlier, the Blackrock Active fixed Income ETFO.

Speaker 5

I know a few tickers off.

Speaker 1

Top of my head.

Speaker 6

I've got three thousand plus children to try to remember. I gotta throw some I gotta throw some love to some of them.

Speaker 3

I'm not surprised at all here you got Vanguard number one, black Rock number two.

Speaker 1

Surprise.

Speaker 2

But here's one thing about BlackRock's number that's interesting. Is twenty five percent of that number though, is ibit. So had they not gotten into the bitcoiny T, if they weren't approved or they weren't improved, then Vanguard would be over double anybody else easily, which again I don't think there's been a year where one issuer took in twice anyone else. So this Vanguard is playing with a sort

of a record situation here. And what's it was amazing is all that could happen despite them not having the bitcoin ETFs, which have been real huge successes for black Rock. And then also the number three Ashore, which is Invesco, and then number five is Fidelity. Fidelity's fifteen point eight billion. The bitcoin ETF is fifty six percent of that number, So it's lifted up some people into the leaderboard and

help them a lot. That just makes Vanguard's number all that more impressive because they don't have any of that.

Speaker 6

Yeah, but you're to the other point of it that bitcoin ETFs have been a game changer in the ETF space. They've appropriately gotten attention from the issuers that are not only competing on price, but some of the firms it's helping to drive their overall flows. So Fidelity, it certainly is as well. As you mentioned, Fidelity has increasingly been turning to active management in the ETF structure. So FBND, which has a tremendous long term track record, has continued

to see love and attention. I'm assuming most of that Invesco is the Triple QS and qqq M, but they've had some success also with some other products.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Absolutely, they're having a good year. I gotta say they're not normally the top five.

Speaker 3

Okay, so Vanguard number one, black Rock number two, I'm not that surprised take it away from there.

Speaker 2

Yeah, so Invesco three, that's they're not normally that high. At thirty five billion JP Morgan, then there's a huge drop. JP Morgan is eighteen billion, Fidelity sixteen billion, DFA, Schwab, Pacer, Capitol Group, Avantas, JP Morgan eighteen point three. Now they've been punching above their weight for five six years now, but they lost their main guy, Brian Lake. He went to Goldman, which is you know, it's like a division rival and Goldman has fallen on hard time. So do

you think that Goldman will rise up? JP Morgan fall a little bit?

Speaker 6

So yes, but I think just that's inevitable. I'm not Brian Lake. Shifting teams is going to play a part on that. But covered qual ETFs have been driving a lot of what JP Morgan's success has been. I think Goldman has the in house expertise in other areas, and I expect we're going to see product development towards active management,

bringing the best of Goldman into the ETF world. And so yes, I would expect a year from now when you bring us back for another halftime report, we'll be talking about the success of Goldman.

Speaker 5

See I just invited us back.

Speaker 3

I was going to say, it just assumes that he's coming over for the holidays every year.

Speaker 5

If I show up with food, you'll you'll let me in.

Speaker 1

The other one in there, Pacer.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Well, we went over Calf earlier, but Calf and Cal's are blockbuster hits.

Speaker 1

To me.

Speaker 2

Pacer is the arc of the higher rates era, because once rates went up It really made cash flow so much more important, whereas ARC stocks are a little more like we don't care about cash flow, We're just betting on the future. But now the rates are up, everybody's like, where's the money. So now these are like perfectly targeted to go after free cash flow. Greats thought about CALF.

By the way, it's not just destroying IWM, it's beating the S and P. So it's interesting we talk about small caps doing so poorly, but CAF managed to select one hundred of them that could beat large caps and that's why the money is so good. You know that CAF is taken in flows every month since the pandemic. Again, it's very ARC esque in that it just its number came up, the stars aligned on it, the sun shone,

whatever metaphor you want to use. Right when the Fed raised rates, it's like when the Fed raised rates, they sort of like it's like the soccer ball got kicked to a different part of the field and a kind of away from the growth thing into the cash flow thing.

Speaker 5

Totally did not see a soccer analogy coming from you.

Speaker 2

I know I'm not a huge fan, but it just seems like a good metaphor because you have to stay home in soccer, you know, because people like chase the ball around. Like if you've seen like little kids play soccer, that's what I feel like. Sometimes these flows remind me of little kids chasing the ball around. But it's better to stay home because it will get kick.

Speaker 1

Vanguard's just sitting there like score.

Speaker 2

Yeah, there are wherever the ball. They're in the field.

Speaker 1

They are all right.

Speaker 3

On that note, Cynthia Todd, thanks so much for joining us on Trillions.

Speaker 4

Hey listen, thanks for having us.

Speaker 5

It's our pleasure. We'll see you next year.

Speaker 3

Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter. I'm at Joel Webbers Show. He's at Eric Balchunis. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson.

Speaker 1

Bye

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