State Street Corp. (STT), the second- largest manager of exchange-traded funds, opened three products that can spread money across a range of asset classes in a push into actively managed ETFs.
The funds will use tactical asset-allocation strategies and invest in ETFs including those run by State Street, James Ross, senior managing director of State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based company’s money-management unit, said today at a conference in New York. The mix of underlying investments will include stocks, bonds, commodities and other asset classes.
“I can see active ETFs being a larger part of the ETF landscape,” Ross said. “We obviously plan to participate in that growing market.”
State Street, which introduced the industry’s oldest ETF in 1993, manages about $307 billion in the products, entirely in passive strategies. The firm’s active ETFs come about two months after Bill Gross became the most prominent fund manager to push into the industry. Gross’s Pimco Total Return Exchange-Traded Fund, which has beaten the bond market with a 3.3 percent return since it started on March 1, has gathered $540 million in assets.