My favorite ETF reads over the past week, along with my ETF tweet and chart of the week!
With ETFs becoming the darling of investors of all ages, direct indexing looks for opening by Jeff Benjamin
“I personally think ETFs are the vehicle of the future.”
Schwab Undercuts Vanguard With Launch of Muni ETF Offering 0.03% Fee by Amanda Albright
“Schwab woke up this morning and chose expense ratio violence.”
3 Great Core Bond ETFs by Bryan Armour
“Three core bond ETFs that provide broad, diversified exposure to the fixed-income market at a sensible cost.”
Fund managers pull nearly 130 single-stock ETF applications by Steve Johnson
“The SEC is not a fan of allowing ETFs with underlying assets in unregulated areas that are out of their control.”
Currency-Hedged ETFs Shine on Strong Dollar by Heather Bell
“Remember the currency-hedged exchange-traded fund craze in the mid-2010s?”
Bitcoin ETFs: How An Ancient Farmers’ Custom Got SEC Approval For Crypto by Vidya Ramakrishnan
“Bitcoin futures ETFs have likely found their niche as a way of providing managed exposure to Bitcoin.”
ETF Tweet of the Week: Vanguard, who currently offers 82 ETFs with over $1.7 trillion in assets, announced they would be closing an ETF for the FIRST TIME EVER. While Vanguard’s ETF lineup overall has absolutely vacuumed-up investor dollars, their factor-based ETFs have struggled to gain traction (at least by Vanguard standards). From my perspective, Vanguard’s factor-based ETFs have always seemed a little off-brand for an issuer that hangs its hat on low cost, plain-Vanilla indexing…
Whoa, the imposs just happened: Vanguard is liquidating a US ETF. They are closing their Liquidity Factor ETF $VFLQ, which had $40m in assets (which isn't that bad tbh but for them it's less than a penny, a total dud, considering their avg ETF size is $21b. pic.twitter.com/1jEhoPIcyb
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) September 26, 2022
ETF Chart of the Week: Thematic ETFs, which were all the rage last year, have seen inflows dip during a volatile 2022. The segment has taken in approximately $75 billion this year, following inflows of $120+ billion in 2021. That said, thematic ETFs are still tracking to match 2020’s haul of $100+ billion – an impressive feat given the significant market declines in many thematic categories (disruptive tech, fin tech, evolving consumer, etc).
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