Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the largest institutional investor of ETFs with over $50 billion in the financial products, according to a report.
BofA Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, BMO, JPMorgan and Citi together hold about $166 billion of ETF assets, according to independent consultancy ETFGI.
“One of the curiosities of the rapidly growing $2.2 trillion ETF market is just how little is known about the institutions using these vehicles,” the Financial Times reports. “Publicly available data on investor types, size and location, the products they use and how these have changed over time has remained a mystery.”
Equity-based exchange products listed in the U.S. have experienced net inflows of $140.3 billion year to date, according to XTF.com.
The ETFGI report said John Paulson is the hedge fund manager with the most assets invested in ETFs due to his stake in SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD).
Harvard University is the largest endowment holder in ETFs, followed by Stanford and Yale, according to the Financial Times article.
Full disclosure: Tom Lydon’s clients own GLD.
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