Vanguard plans on expanding its exchange traded fund (ETF) offerings to compete directly with other “plain-vanilla” size and style indexes offered by other fund providers such as iShares and State Street Global Advisors.
The proposed size and style indexes that Vanguard has in the works will try to reflect the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, S&P SmallCap 600 and Russell 1000, 2000 and 3000 indexes, writes Matt Hougan for IndexUniverse.
Since year-end 2006, Vanguard’s ETF assets under management have shot up 388%, compared to 66% growth at iShares and 117% growth at SSgA. iShares still dominates on a dollar basis, garnering assets of $158.8 billion within that time frame while Vanguard saw an $86.3 billion increase. [Vanguard’s 19 Planned ETFs.]
Vanguard has stayed competitive with other fund providers, mostly because of its lower ETF fees and consistent index-tracking performance. [ETFs: No Longer a Mutual Fund Supplement.]
Monthly fund-flows data also shows that there is a consistent and steady stream of demand for Vanguard products, which may indicate that there is a large and loyal customer base for Vanguard to draw upon in its new ETF offerings, Hougan remarks.
For more information on new ETFs, visit our new ETFs category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.