ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 9/24/26; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
This Bonkers ETF Market: The Zine Edition by Dave Nadig
“The industry (which now includes exchanges, ETF issuers, bookies, prediction markets, crypto folks and an octopus of co-conspirators) is absolutely counting on investors not paying attention.”
ETFs come of age by Gregg Greenberg
“The story isn’t that investors are buying more ETFs – it’s that they’re building more portfolios with ETFs. And that shift has years, not quarters, ahead of it.”
Investors Pour $1.5 Trillion Into ETFs — Do They Know Something? by Matt Krantz
“Investors continue to abandon open-end mutual funds in favor of ETFs to take advantage of superior tax efficiency, lower expense ratios, and seamless trading flexibility.”
Jane Street Joins Wave of Dealers Offering Swaps for Risky ETFs by Yiqin Shen and Bernard Goyder
“The move emphasizes the allure of the business, with non-bank dealers that have dominated the single-stock ETFs increasingly competing with Wall Street banks.”
M&A Mania Hits ETF Industry: Who’s Next? by Todd Rosenbluth
“As boutique crypto firms adjust staffing and fight for market share, boutique-to-boutique consolidation could allow smaller players to pool resources, achieve scale, and survive.”
Blockchain.com, NYSE plan access to tokenized US stocks and ETFs by Yogita Khatri
“Token holders would retain traditional rights such as dividends and voting.”
ETF Post of the Week
Multiple issuers filed for Major League Baseball futures contract ETFs this past week, including 2x leveraged versions. On Friday, VolatilityShares filed for NBA futures ETFs. This comes on the heels of last month’s filings for NHL futures ETFs. The underlying NHL futures contracts are set to launch on CME next week. Those contracts are powered by CME FSPI Sports Indexes, which are briefly explained here:
“CME FSPI Sports Indexes will be powered by FutureSports and calculated based on live, in-game metrics of teams for every event in a league’s respective season. The indexes will follow a transparent, points-based system based on official league statistics. Positive actions (e.g., scoring, earning a favorable advantage for an individual event) add points to the index, while negative actions (e.g., opponent scoring, in-event penalties or setbacks) subtract them. It’s pure performance by teams, translated into a trackable, tradable number.”
Morningstar’s Ben Johnson described the leveraged MLB futures ETFs as “basically the equivalent of a corked bat with eight holes drilled in the handle that’s been dipped in pine tar.”
No disagreement here. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Leveraged 2x Baseball Teams ETFs filed right after the the other 1x batch filed – Eff Dec 4
— ETF Hearsay by Henry Jim (@ETFhearsay) September 21, 2026
• LeagueShares Leveraged Arizona Diamondbacks(R) ETF – $LDBX
• LeagueShares Leveraged Colorado Rockies(R) ETF – $LCOL
• LeagueShares Leveraged Detroit Tigers(R) ETF – $LBBS
•… pic.twitter.com/QPzICmQPSO
ETF Chart of the Week
Spot bitcoin ETF flows have turned positive for the year, and the average holder is now back in the green following a nearly 35% surge in the digital asset’s price over the past month and a half.
Since Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department would be stepping up its purchases of longer-dated bonds, spot bitcoin ETFs have taken in a whopping $5.3 billion.
Source: Bianco Research
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Tom Hendrickson, President of TMX VettaFi, and Rob Arnott, Chairman of Syzygy Asset Management (formerly Research Affiliates), going behind the scenes of VettaFi’s acquisition of RAFI Indices. They unpacked how the deal came together, why fundamental indexing matters, and what’s next.
