Superstar Fund Managers Are Launching ETFs. Are They Worth the Price?
Actively managed ETFs have pros behind the scenes making investing decisions, but they’re also more expensive.
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Exchange-traded funds, long synonymous with passive management, increasingly come with humans behind the scenes. With billions flowing into the $6.6 trillion industry almost every day, superstar fund managers who ten years ago might have launched a mutual fund are instead debuting their strategies in ETFs.
As a result, there are more actively managed ETFs than ever before. About 156 of them have started trading this year, compared with just 77 passive ones. They’ve attracted $62 billion of fresh cash this year, about 12% of the total $523 billion poured into ETFs overall, despite currently making up only 4% of the total industry assets, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence.