ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 4/9/26; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
Citi sees US ETF assets topping $25 trillion by 2030 as active funds gain ground by Leo Almazora
“The Wall Street firm’s base case projects US ETF assets will reach $25 trillion by 2030 and $42 trillion by 2035.”
BlackRock, State Street Target Invesco’s $379 Billion Tech Grip by Vildana Hajric and Katie Greifeld
“Invesco has enjoyed virtually exclusive access to the pure Nasdaq 100 in the US market.”
Is Ticker Squatting a Thing? by Sumit Roy
“Holding a ticker long-term requires an actual listed security, so the barrier is a lot higher than the $10 a year it cost to park a domain name.”
Lives of ETFs Get Shorter as More Funds Shutter Than Ever Before by Mallika Mitra
“The industry is still in growth mode now, but it feels like it’s getting more business-oriented.”
DRAM: The Smartest ETF Launch of the Year by Sumit Roy
“Roundhill saw the gap and pounced.”
Crypto ETFs: 2026 Reveals Key Crypto Trends by Roxanna Islam
“Crypto ETFs — even in the crowded arena of spot Bitcoin ETFs — are still evolving.”
Morgan Stanley’s bitcoin ETF opens today, giving BlackRock’s $55 billion IBIT fund its toughest rival yet by Helene Braun
“The bank can tap its vast wealth management network.”
New Bitcoin ETF Chases Gains That Come While Wall Street Sleeps by Isabelle Lee
“The product is designed around a striking disconnect in Bitcoin’s return profile.”
(Note: David Nicholas, Founder & CEO of XFUNDS by Nicholas Wealth, will join me on next week’s episode of Crypto Prime to highlight the Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF (NGHT), along with two other crypto-related ETFs from the firm.)
Advisors Weigh Crypto Portfolio Strategies by DJ Shaw
“I would expect a product that’s able to give you 90 percent of the returns of the crypto universe with just one fund would be more appealing.”
ETF Post of the Week
Will Hershey, Co-Founder of Roundhill Investments, probably knows a thing or two about selling ticker symbols. Back in 2022, there was widespread speculation that Roundhill sold its META ticker to Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). ETF.com’s Sumit Roy explained it this way:
“When Facebook rebranded to Meta Platforms in October 2021, the company announced it would change its ticker from FB to MVRS. Unfortunately, the more obvious ticker—META—was already in use by Roundhill Investments for its Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF. Then, two days before the switch was set to happen in November, Meta delayed it with no explanation. In January 2022, Roundhill announced its ETF would change its ticker to METV—also with no explanation. A few months later, Meta Platforms began trading as META. Neither company ever confirmed whether money changed hands, but industry speculation has consistently pointed to a multimillion-dollar payment.”
Which makes it especially interesting that Hershey recently spotted Tuttle Capital quietly changing the ticker on its SPAC and New Issue ETF from SPCX to SPCK. Notably, the fund has just $7 million in assets, despite being on the market for more than five years.
So who might want the SPCX ticker?
There’s a little company called SpaceX, which is widely expected to IPO in the coming months at a valuation north of $2 trillion.
Might be time for Tuttle Capital’s Matt Tuttle to start browsing island listings.
Congrats @TuttleCapital pic.twitter.com/Acg3xcG9JN
— Will Hershey (@maybebullish) April 7, 2026
ETF Chart of the Week
The top-performing ETF so far this year? It’s the Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET), which is up an astounding 746% in just over three months. Zoom out to the past year, and BWET has surged over 1,400%. It’s moving so fast that charts from just a few days ago are already obsolete.
So what exactly does BWET invest in? According to its fact sheet, the fund is “designed to reflect the daily price movements of indices that track the future cost of transporting crude oil.” In other words, BWET is basically a bet on how expensive it is to move oil around the world by tanker.
Given the Iran conflict, the reasons behind this surge may already be obvious. But here’s how Bloomberg explains it:
“The rally was fueled by a sharp repricing in shipping costs after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in early March, following U.S. and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggered retaliatory attacks across the Gulf. The closure forced Asian buyers to source crude from outside the Persian Gulf, driving up demand — and prices — for the vessels that carry it. The going rate for very large crude carriers loading in the Gulf currently stands at over half a million dollars a day, roughly five times pre-war levels.”
What’s particularly notable is that despite outperforming the next-closest ETF by nearly 540%, BWET has attracted less than $25 million in new inflows this year.
Source: Bloomberg’s Mia Gindis and Sidhartha Shukla
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Cinthia Murphy, Investment Strategist at VettaFi, and Troy Cates, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of NEOS Investments. Cinthia examined key trends in first-quarter ETF flows and looked ahead to the remainder of the year. Troy offered a tour of one of the industry’s fastest-growing ETF lineups and discussed key considerations for investors evaluating options-based ETF strategies.
Crypto Prime Podcast
Bill Birmingham, Managing Director at Osprey Funds, joined me on last week’s Crypto Prime to discuss the firm’s crypto-focused fund lineup, weigh in on the recent downturn, and highlight opportunities across digital assets. He also addressed the potential risks quantum computing poses to bitcoin and how investors should think about crypto allocation.
