ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 11/20/25; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
U.S. ETF Industry Evolving as 2025 Flows Beat Annual Record by Aniket Ullal
“The low-cost segment, which we define as ETFs with net expense ratios of 0.25% and below, still accounted for 79% of the U.S. ETF market by assets.”
Schwab is ending six-year hiatus of ETF platform fees — possibly with a bang; ETF OneSource was a winner made obsolete by Chuck’s 2019 zeroing of commissions by Oisín Breen
“Schwab is expected to ask vendors to hand over 15% of their ETF fee revenues or face a commission or ‘ticket charge’ of about $100.”
Capital Group, Goldman, T. Rowe Hit ETF Milestones by Emile Hallez
“As niche ETF issuers have flooded the market with leveraged and thematic new funds, Capital Group and many other big asset managers have kept a focus on core-style products.”
There’s a Word for That by Jeffrey Ptak
“Sustainability of these payouts aside, investors chased the ETF’s returns and massive distribution rates.”
How To Protect Your Portfolio With Crash-Proof ETFs by Hank Tucker
“Assets under management have exploded for Innovator since its first fund was introduced in 2018, even though it has been underperforming the indexes it tracks and has expenses 26 times higher than Vanguard and BlackRock S&P 500 ETFs.”
(Note: JD Gardner, Founder of Aptus, will join me on next week’s ETF Prime to examine the costs and practical applications of buffer ETFs.)
Solana ETFs: Innovation Continues Through Sell-Off by Roxanna Islam
“While headlines have focused on lower prices and ETF outflows, solana ETFs have quietly launched with some interesting features like staking.”
Crypto ETFs Enter Maturity Phase as IRS and SEC Actions Drive Rapid Expansion by Helene Braun
“Each change moves the products closer to the full experience of holding assets directly, but with the guardrails that regulated funds provide.”
ETF Post of the Week
The SEC issued an approval order last week allowing Dimensional to offer ETF share classes of existing mutual funds. With this decision, Dimensional becomes the first asset manager to gain access to this structure since Vanguard pioneered it in 2000. Vanguard received a patent on the multi–share class model in 2005, and when that patent expired in May 2023, it opened the door for other firms to pursue similar offerings. Nearly 90 asset managers have now filed with the SEC to adopt the structure.
Vanguard’s structure enables an ETF to operate as a share class of an existing mutual fund. For example, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) is a share class of the Vanguard 500 Index mutual fund – it’s the same pool of assets. This structure offers several important advantages, including the ability to better leverage economies of scale, which allows Vanguard to reduce backend costs and charge lower fees to investors. This structure has also helped Vanguard minimize capital gain distributions from its mutual funds since it can wash gains through the ETF share class.
Notably, the SEC historically allowed Vanguard to use this structure only for index-based funds. Dimensional, however, will be permitted to extend it to actively managed strategies.
Gerard O’Reilly, Dimensional Co-CEO and Co-CIO, commented:
“The joining of mutual funds and ETFs through share classes represents a significant enhancement in how millions of Americans can access financial markets in the future. Share classes allow investors to choose the investment strategy that best suits their needs as a first-order consideration, and then select their ideal wrapper to access that strategy, while broadening benefits of increased tax efficiency and reduced costs from scale.”
Beyond investor benefits, the structure offers strategic advantages for asset managers. Mutual-fund-centric firms can preserve their strong 401(k) businesses while expanding more efficiently into the faster-growing ETF market. At the same time, several ETF-centric firms have filed to offer mutual fund share classes of existing ETFs – opening their innovative ETF strategies to retirement plans and other platforms that favor mutual funds.
Dimensional’s approval will be the first of many, and multi–share class structures are set to be one of the biggest industry stories of 2026.
ETF Share Class Update:
— Ben Johnson, CFA (@MstarBenJohnson) November 17, 2025
Dimensional just got the official "ok" from the SEC to offer ETF share classes of its mutual funds. pic.twitter.com/iWHZSa9s6C
ETF Chart of the Week
With bitcoin and the broader crypto market in a tailspin, I thought this chart was especially interesting. It shows that the average spot bitcoin ETF investor is now underwater following a 35% decline in the digital asset. While spot bitcoin ETFs have returned 80% since their January 2024 launch, investors have bought all along the way, including at recent price tops.
Now, we’re seeing near-record outflows from spot bitcoin ETFs. Are some investors capitulating and selling into the recent lows? Time will tell.
Bloomberg highlighted analysis from Citi Research’s Alex Saunders, who estimates that every $1 billion pulled from bitcoin ETFs corresponds to roughly a 3.4% drop in bitcoin’s price. The implication is that flows into and out of spot ETFs are increasingly driving price action, potentially creating a negative feedback loop.
I’m not entirely convinced by that math, considering more than $58 billion has flowed into bitcoin ETFs since inception and the asset is “only” up 80%.
Still, it will be worth watching how the average spot bitcoin ETF investor behaves under sustained pressure.
Source: Jim Bianco
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Greg Stumm, CEO of American Beacon Partners, and Jason Greenblath, Senior Portfolio Manager & Director of Corporate Credit Research at American Century Investments. Greg broke down key ETF trends, including distribution, active management, multi-share class structures, private assets, and crypto. Jason highlighted where he sees opportunities in fixed income and made a strong case for the value of active management.
Crypto Prime Podcast
Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at the Solana Foundation, joined me on last week’s Crypto Prime to discuss the rollout of spot Solana ETFs, outline Solana’s core value proposition, respond to common criticisms, and offer his outlook on the network’s future.
