ETFs continue to be on a roll. YTD, inflows to ETFs have amounted to $1.45Tn, with $501Bn during the 3Q24. Subconsciously, when we talk about ETFs, we tend to think about passive investing, but around 9% of the total pool of ETF money has an active strategy approach. Passive ETFs have exploded because they’re easy to trade, and, in general, because they have low expense ratios. But above all, because in a 16 year prolonged bull market (since gfc), it’s very difficult to beat indexing. Cost is named as the first reason, but tracking error is also important. In order to beat the index with an active approach you need to deviate from it meaningfully, and you need to be right consistently, which over short periods of time, it’s difficult, but over the long run, it’s doable. The interesting part is that active ETFs are growing at a very solid pace; 5 years ago they were only 2% of the total pool of ETFs. Since then, they have grown by a factor of 4X relative to passive ones. What would happen to these strategies when the bull market ends? Will investors have the patience to stick to their (passive) guns and stay put over the downturn? How would active strategies, which are mainly algos, compare to traditional mutual funds, managed by humans?
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