Displaying items by tag: etf

(New York)

Thematic ETFs have been one of the market’s bright spots over the last couple of years. For evidence of this…Read the full story here on our partner Magnifi’s site.

(New York)

It has been a decade in the making, but it finally, unceremoniously, happened. The AUM in passive investment vehicles, like ETFs, has finally overtaken that in actively managed ones, like mutual funds. As of August 31, money in passive funds totaled $4.27 tn, just a touch higher than the $4.25 tn in actively-managed funds. In a good summary of the overall change in landscape, the Wall Street Journal says “That shift lowered the price of investing for individuals, reduced the influence of stock pickers and turned a handful of Wall Street outsiders into the biggest power brokers in the industry”.

FINSUM: Every advisor reading this column knows exactly why this happened, but it is nonetheless a landmark moment. It is also perhaps a warning sign—which side is driving the market?

(New York)

One of the weakest sectors over the last year has been asset management. If you take a close look at some top asset managers, including Invesco, BlackRock, etc, you will see that many are down 20% or more. The growth of passives, pressure on fees, and weak inflows have all combined to bring down the managers. According to Barron’s they look like big bargains. BlackRock, T.Rowe, Franklin Resources, and Legg Mason look like the good bets. There are some great payers in the group too, with Invesco and BlackRock both sporting yields over 4% and AllianceBernstein paying a whopping 8.6%.

FINSUM: Yes, the industry’s traditional model is under fire, but those with very good scale will win out. Therefore, we do think the very top managers are a good buy, especially at these valuations/yields.

(New York)

The old fears are rising anew, and not without reason. With volatility now back in a big way, fears are once again stirring about the reliability of ETFs. In previous market flare ups there have been some major ETF losses. The ETF industry is worth $4 tn and has never been through a bear market at its current size. The biggest fears are in fixed income ETFs, where the “liquidity mismatch” is greatest between the tradable ETFs and the illiquid underlying bonds.

FINSUM: With rates and yields set to rise, there could be some volatility in fixed income, which means there could be some big issues in fixed income ETFs, especially in the most illiquid areas.

(New York)

The last two weeks could hardly have been worse for investors. Stocks plunged and bonds are falling, with the former led by obsession over the VIX. However, according to Bloomberg there is a ticket timing much bigger than the VIX, and one you probably aren’t paying much attention too—ETF loan funds. The market is much bigger than the $8 bn of volatility linked ETFs that got wiped out over the last couple of weeks, try $156 billion between loan ETFs and mutual funds. The big worry is that since these kind of illiquid underlying investments—actual loans—cannot be sold so quickly as the ETFs, that it could cause huge losses as ETFs stampede out but fund managers cannot liquidate the underlying quickly enough.

FINSUM: So this is a provocative spin on a common argument. Our counter, however, is that credit worthiness is pretty good overall, so it doesn’t seem like an exodus will occur.