ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 4/3/25; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
ETF Bonanza Hits Overdrive With 1,000 New Funds Seen for 2025 by Vildana Hajric and Emily Graffeo
“More than 200 of the new 233 funds that have kicked off trading this year are actively managed.”
3 ETF Demand Trends Amid Market Turmoil by Cinthia Murphy
“During Q1, some $300 billion in net new assets found their way into ETFs.”
Actively managed ETFs hit $1 trillion milestone: Why tariff uncertainty may spark more growth by Krysta Escobar
“Actively managed ETFs now comprise almost one-tenth of the ETF industry.”
VOO and IVV Chasing SPY for the ETF AUM Crown by Phil Mackintosh
“SPY has added $52 billion in AUM from retail since the beginning of 2017, more than the combined net new retail assets gained by VOO, IVV and SPLG over the same period.”
Cheap, Fat & Starving for Attention: ETFs Q1 2025 by Dave Nadig
“I did a quick poll of some favorite ETF lawyers and regulators, and I’d put the over/under date on when the first of these gets approved at May 15th.”
Bitcoin ETFs Could See $3B in Q2 Inflows Even Without Price Recovery, Says Analyst by Helene Braun
“Even if current market conditions persist in the second quarter, we are seeing strong traction from financial advisors and institutional investors.”
ETF Post of the Week
When market turbulence increases, ETF liquidity shines. Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas highlighted the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which had its third-highest daily trading volume ever on Friday. Eric’s colleague James Seyffart noted that US-listed ETFs overall actually broke their all-time daily trading volume record, with approximately $525 billion. The prior mark was $483 billion, set on January 24th, 2022.
Notably, this is exactly why ETFs were created to begin with following the October 1987 stock market crash. Balchunas, from his excellent piece “How the U.S. government inadvertently launched a $3 trillion industry“:
“When stocks started to decline on Black Monday, institutions went to sell those futures, only to discover that the sudden rush of sellers vastly overwhelmed those willing to buy. This forced the futures to trade at discounts to the stocks they represented, triggering program traders to enter the market with automated sell orders for stocks underlying the index futures. Chaos ensued. The selling and volatility in the futures market had, in essence, been transmitted to individual stocks, increasing the panic and exacerbating the selloff.
One particular section of Chapter 3 caught Bloom’s attention. There, the SEC suggested that “an alternative approach be examined” and posited that if well-capitalized specialists and supplementary market makers could have turned to a single “product” for trading baskets of stocks, the market damage—and volatility—may have been significantly smaller. Indeed, such a product might even have prevented the crash by providing a liquidity buffer between the futures market and individual stocks.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
$SPY saw over $100B(!) in volume today, 3rd biggest day ever, more than double what any stock traded (Nvidia was most active stock with $47b). Anything over $60b shows big fear. Also a reminder that while SPY may have lost asset crown to $VOO but it is still the Liquidity King. pic.twitter.com/rhEG0ilIwa
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 4, 2025
ETF Chart of the Week
Actively managed ETF assets recently hit $1 trillion. State Street’s Matt Bartolini:
“Active ETFs are on pace for $480 billion of flows in 2025, with a legitimate chance of breaking above $500 billion. Assets now sit around $1 trillion, so this $500 billion haul would essentially be half of their current assets — accelerating the hockey stick level of growth that they have experienced in the past few years.”
While active ETFs are less than 10% of industry assets, they are taking in nearly 40% of flows this year. I expect this momentum to continue (check out the CNBC ETF Edge discussion below for my thoughts on why).
Source: State Street’s Matt Bartolini
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Kristin Myers, Editor-in-Chief at etf.com, who previewed their highly anticipated 2025 industry awards ceremony. VettaFi’s Zeno Mercer also explained the recent surge in gold and international equity ETFs.
ETF Pulse
On last week’s ETF Pulse, etf.com Editor-in-Chief Kristin Myers and I discussed year-to-date ETF flows, IVV surpassing SPY in assets, BlackRock’s plans to launch a Texas-focused ETF, and the potential for a Schwab bitcoin ETF.
CNBC ETF Edge
I had the pleasure of joining CNBC’s Bob Pisani and Strategas’ Todd Sohn to go in-depth on actively managed ETFs. We covered active ETFs hitting $1 trillion in assets, the benefits of active management in an ETF wrapper, the potential impact of ETF share class approval, and much more. Enjoy!
Crypto Prime Podcast
Samir Kerbage, Chief Investment Officer at Hashdex, joined me on last week’s Crypto Prime to explore the increasing adoption of crypto among financial advisors, the improving regulatory backdrop, and the potential advantages of an index-based investment approach.
