Article courtesy of Rachel Koning Beals..
Actively managed exchange-traded funds may have gotten the headliner needed to push this sleepy category into the investing mainstream.
Bill Gross and his bond-fund-giant Pimco in early May added a third actively managed ETF to their roster. This offering follows their actively managed Pimco Total Return ETF BOND +0.04% .
The ETF, a twist on Gross’s flagship Pimco Total Return Fund PTTAX +0.09% , is drawing a robust following in its short two-month run. It had more than $800 million in assets under management as of mid-May.
The actively managed ETF sub-category has remained a paper-thin slice of the trillion-dollar market. Now, in addition to Pimco, ETF leaders like State Street Global Advisor’s SPDRs, BlackRock’s iShares, Wisdom Tree, and others, look to increase their presence (slowly, for now) in the actively managed side of the business.
“Pimco’s lending its name into the active ETF space is a game-changer for the entire industry. It’s one of those things where if you don’t get ahead of the times, then you are left in the dust trying to catch up,” said Tom Lydon, president of Global Trends Investments and editor of ETFtrends.com.“With these big-name brands essentially legitimizing this 0.5% corner of the $1.2 trillion ETF industry, this can only reinforce the smaller players already in the space,” said Lydon, who participated on a MarketWatch Investing Insights panel called “ETF Trading: Where the Market Action Is.”
“This is where the future of actively managed ETFs lies, with niche strategies that open new opportunities either too sophisticated or difficult to execute for most investors,” says John Nyaradi, pulisher of Wall Street Sector Selector.
Such tactics, he added, could include index ETFs, or a commodities play such as precious metals. Or, perhaps, it’s a specific strategy such as Active Bear ETF HDGE -0.19% , an active ETF started in January 2011. This fund, with more than $270 million under management, shorts various stocks. The ETF rises in value as the underlying holdings decline in price.