While still a small segment of the growing exchange traded fund universe, actively managed strategies could support the ETF industry’s next growth spurt.
A recent SEI (Nasdaq: SEIC) white paper, The Rise of Active Management in ETFs, outlines the shift in the actively managed ETF space and how new regulatory guidance and increased interest among traditional mutual fund providers could help support growth.
ETFs are “simply a wrapper, a structure (similar to a mutual fund) around an investment philosophy, process and portfolio of holdings, but with investor demand increasing and regulatory guidance improving, opportunities exist for actively managed ETFs to explode,” according to the white paper.
Active ETFs, with about $16 billion in assets, currently make up less than 1% of the $1.86 trillion U.S. ETF industry. Additionally, many actively managed ETFs mainly cover fixed-income strategies. For instance, the PIMCO Enhanced Short Maturity ETF (NYSEArca: MINT) is the largest active ETF offering, with $3.8 billion in assets, followed by PIMCO Total Return (NYSEArca: BOND) $3.4 billion and AdvisorShares Peritus High Yield ETF (NYSEArca: HYLD) $1.1 billion.