After all that talk, actively managed exchange traded funds (ETFs) are so far bringing passiveness from investors now that they’re here.

Ian Salisbury for the Wall Street Journal reports that these funds, after years of anticipation and back-and-forth with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), haven’t gathered assets as quickly as other new ETF launches have in the past.

Bear Stearns Current Yield (YYY), which launched in March as the first such ETF, has $50 million in assets. WisdomTree’s new line of six currency and current income-oriented funds, most of which hit last week, have about $120 million in total. Invesco PowerShares‘ line of four has about $11 million total.

It seems that investors are waiting to see how these ETFs perform before they dive in. They could want to watch them build a track record and get to know the managers behind them first, and many might want three or five years of returns before they’ll consider stepping in. "Back tested" results can’t really be applied with these funds the way they can with those that track an index.

Among the actively managed ETFs now available:

• PowerShares Active Low Duration Fund (PLK)
• PowerShares Active Mega Cap Fund (PMA)
• PowerShares Active Alpha Q Fund (PQY)
• PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap Fund (PQZ)
• WisdomTree Dreyfus Chinese Yuan Fund (CYB)
• WisdomTree Dreyfus Indian Rupee Fund (ICN)
• WisdomTree Dreyfus Brazilian Real Fund (BZF)
• WisdomTree Dreyfus Euro Fund (EU)

Tags | Asia, Brazil, China, Emerging Markets, Europe, India