ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 4/2/26; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
Q1 ’26: The State of the (Bonkers) ETF Market by Dave Nadig
“Trust is everything in 2026.”
Average ETF Lifespan Collapses With Wall Street Antsy for Scale by Katie Greifeld
“Closing an unpopular fund once carried a stigma, but firms are now more willing to cut their losses.”
How Alpha Architect Is Keeping 351 ETFs Rolling by Emile Hallez
“There are no fewer than 77 US ETFs that have been seeded with a total of nearly $17 billion via 351 exchanges.”
Opening the Door, Not the Floodgates: The Real Impact of ETF Share Classes by Matt Barry
“The approvals and early launches represent an important milestone in ETF development. But the benefits will accrue over years, not quarters.”
Top ETF issuers doubtful about dual share class impact by William Johnson
“It’s creating some very tough discussions out there in board rooms at the asset managers and at the platforms.”
Ark ETFs to Add OpenAI Stake as Retail Investors Chase Tech Boom by Shirin Ghaffary and Isabelle Lee
“My goal is, how do we get it ultimately into true retail hands, which is actually why I like the Ark ETFs.”
Goldman Sachs completes Innovator Capital acquisition, lifting ETF assets to $90 billion by Reuters
“What we found is a lot of advisors have clients that are in pre-retirement or in retirement. They are prioritizing capital preservation over capital appreciation.”
Texas Stock Exchange nabs first primary listing commitment as Dallas firm launches energy ETF by Sasha Richie
“Exchange-traded product listings will launch on TXSE in September.”
NASA’s Artemis mission thrusts space ETFs into the spotlight. Have advisors got ‘the right stuff’? by James Rogers
“Space ETFs have also been in the spotlight amid months of swirling chatter about a possible SpaceX IPO.”
(Note: VettaFi’s Roxanna Islam and I discussed space ETFs on this week’s ETF Prime, which you can watch below).
Hashdex’s diversified crypto ETF adds options for hedging, income generation by Omkar Godbole
“The ETF options market is catching up quickly.”
ETF Post of the Week
The United States Oil ETF (USO) shattered its previous monthly trading volume record, driven by a 50% surge in oil prices in March amid the ongoing Iran conflict.
$USO has traded $158b worth of share in March. Here's what that looks like compared to every other months in its 20yr history. pic.twitter.com/R1flDcvjqy
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) March 31, 2026
ETF Chart of the Week
Over 250 ETFs launched in the first quarter, pushing the industry past 5,000 total products. Last year, a whopping 1,100+ ETFs came to market.
Launch costs keep falling, and issuers seem increasingly comfortable throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. One winner can easily make up for several losers.
So far, 32 of the new ETFs this year have already eclipsed $100 million in assets. Meanwhile, about 200 are still under $25 million (including 150 below $10 million). It’s early, but the dispersion is telling.
Issuers are more willing to take risks and less afraid to fail. As Tidal Financial Group’s Aga Kuplinska told Bloomberg:
“The idea of closing an ETF was almost embarrassing. These days, that’s no longer the case — you launch a product, adopt some metric that if the fund isn’t meeting in 12 to 18 months, let’s close it and recycle the resources. There’s opportunity costs built into leaving a product on the shelf that’s not raising assets.”
Basically, shut down the laggards and reload the spaghetti cannon.
Source: David Perlman, ETF Research at UBS
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Simeon Hyman, Global Investment Strategist at ProShares, and Roxanna Islam, Head of Sector & Industry Research at VettaFi. Simeon highlighted one of the most successful ETF launches ever – the ProShares GENIUS Money Market ETF (IQMM), the first money market ETF designed to meet the stringent requirements of the GENIUS Act (nice written recap here). Roxanna explored the fast-rising world of defense, space, and drone ETFs, which are attracting increased investor attention.
Crypto Prime Podcast
Giang Bui, Head of Issuer Growth at Securitize, joined me on last week’s Crypto Prime to discuss the firm’s collaboration with the New York Stock Exchange to develop a tokenized securities platform, and explain how tokenization could reshape markets and influence crypto asset prices.
