Northern Trust has re-entered the market with a successful line-up of exchange traded funds, FlexShares. All of its funds that were introduced last month have ranked within the top 20 new ETFs launched over the past year.
“The founder of Armbruster Capital Management, Mark Armbruster, which runs $100 million in assets, has been monitoring the $127 million FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factors Tilt ETF (NYSEArca: TILT). Despite competing in a highly commoditized field of broad-based domestic stock funds, the all-cap ETF had nearly $106 million in net inflows through August. That was good enough to land in the top 15 among all ETFs launched in the U.S. over the past year,” reports Murray Coleman at Dow Jones Newswires. [FlexShares Expands Its ‘Factor Tilt’ ETF Lineup]
“It’s a very cost-effective way to rebalance and manage portfolios across multiple accounts,” Robert Bolan, adviser at Envision Wealth Planning, said of the FlexShares ETF. TILT was the first ETF from FlexShares that had built in overweighting to value and small-cap stocks. Time is going to tell if these funds can outperform similar ETFs from other providers.
The ETFs hinge on the thought that small-cap and value stocks are a winning combination over long time periods. Academic research does prove that this combination can be successful over the long haul, but the ETFe will have to actually prove the theory through performance. [FlexShares ETFs Garner $1 Billion in Less Than 1 Year]
“I’ve come to the conclusion that buying one diversified fund that provides exposure to value and small-cap tilts is a beautiful thing,” Robert Bolen said in the report.