ETF Inflows & Outflows
Performance Leaders & Laggards
Source: ETF Action; flows and performance data as of 10/8/26; performance data excludes leveraged and inverse products
Weekly ETF Reads
The ETF M&A Boom is Back: What Matters for Investors by Lara Crigger
“It’s a scale game, pure and simple.”
These ETFs Made a Bundle. For Their Managers by Jeffrey Ptak
“It appears the ETFs’ expenses, which were around $186 million over this period, ate up more than half the roughly $392 million in income and gains investors made before fees.”
Sports gambling seeps even deeper into Wall Street’s world as hundreds of pro team ETFs emerge by Kevin Williams
“The line between gambling and investing has not simply been blurred, it has been erased.”
Would you buy a Yankees ETF? by Steve Johnson
“The main adopters of sports team ETFs — if they ever are approved — will be regular fans who already have a tendency to concentrate their financial exposure on top of their emotional exposure.”
Collectibles in ETFs May Not Be as Crazy As It Sounds by Griffin Kelly
“A panel of industry executives said ETFs might be only a few years away from tracking collectibles, with one saying his firm had even considered the idea of a Pokémon card fund.”
Why the price of this one ETF has gone exponential by Jules Rimmer
“The Breakwave ETF has increased by 55 times this year.”
Ripple, Crypto’s Payments Giant, Breaks Into Wall Street by Vicky Ge Huang
“The business, now called Ripple Prime, is working with a number of ETF providers.”
The SEC Just Approved 3x Bitcoin ETFs – But is the Product Built to Decay? by Ashrith Rao
“In highly unpredictable markets, the compounding mechanism can have a negative impact on the holder, a phenomenon known as volatility decay.”
Winklevoss group seeks to launch Zcash ETF with 0.25% fee, proposed WINK ticker by Jason Shubnell
“The filing comes 13 years after the pair filed for the first U.S. spot bitcoin ETF.”
ETF Post of the Week
Corgi, which has already launched over 200 ETFs this year alone, debuted the Corgi MANGOS ETF (MN) last week. An interesting aspect of this ETF is that it obtains exposure to private companies Anthropic and OpenAI via swaps. Fairly normal, right? Well, the prices of those swaps are derived from perpetual futures contracts, which swap counterparties may use to hedge their exposure. If that sentence makes you do a double-take, welcome to the ETF jungle. Things have been getting weirder and more exotic by the day, as Morningstar’s Ben Johnson highlights below. And they’re only getting weirder. There’s a reason ETFs have been called the Y Combinator of asset management. If there’s an innovative idea, wrap it in an ETF and see if the market wants it.
(Note: Brian Daly, Director of the Division of Investment Management at the Securities and Exchange Commission, will join me on next week’s ETF Prime to provide an exclusive update on novel ETFs!)
Roughly 2/3 of the 3,440 ETFs that have launched in the past 5 years* are nacho ordinary ETFs. Single stock, leveraged, defined outcome, derivative income, and Corgi ETFs, among others, have proliferated. *Source: Morningstar Direct. Data as of Oct. 8, 2026. Only includes surviving funds.
— Ben Johnson, CFA (@MstarBenJohnson) October 9, 2026
ETF Chart of the Week
With the recent spike in interest rates, bond ETFs are feeling the pain. Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas and Athanasios Psarofagis note that about 50% of bond ETFs have posted negative one-year returns following the surge in yields. Notably, fixed income ETFs have still attracted a record $527 billion in inflows this year, including $77 billion over the past month. That makes sense, given that there’s now a fixed income ETF to express nearly any view on the bond market, while more attractive yields are likely drawing additional investor interest.
Source: Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas
ETF Prime Podcast
Last week’s ETF Prime featured Cinthia Murphy, Director of Research at VettaFi, and Jeff Klingelhofer, Managing Director & Portfolio Manager at Aristotle Pacific. Cinthia joined me to discuss the ETF stories we’re watching for the remainder of the year, including 351 Exchanges, novel ETFs, TXSE listings, crypto ETFs, Corgi, and record inflows. Jeff discussed the firm’s recent entry into the ETF market and offered an in-depth look at today’s fixed income markets.
Crypto Prime Podcast
Rali Perduhova, CEO & Co-Founder of ANDRA (Adaptable Network Designed for Regulated Assets), joined me on last week’s Crypto Prime to explain how the recently launched platform enables issuers to bring ETF shares on-chain through tokenized representations of existing funds. Built on the Canton Network, ANDRA is designed to work alongside existing ETF infrastructure while enabling on-chain settlement, transfers, and distribution. Rali also explored the future of tokenization and the evolving regulatory landscape, including the SEC’s recent innovation exemption for tokenized securities.
ETF Zoo Podcast
I had the pleasure of joining ETF.com hosts Dave Nadig, President & Director of Research, and Sumit Roy, Senior ETF Analyst, on last week’s ETF Zoo. Along with Mike Akins, Founding Partner at ETF Action, and Brent Sullivan, Founder of Tax Alpha Insider, we discussed crypto and the CLARITY Act, the Treasury Department’s crackdown on 351 Exchanges, covered call ETFs, and much more. Enjoy!
