Vanguard, the third-largest U.S. provider of exchange traded funds, is again dominating ETF inflows.
In the first quarter, “Vanguard attracted $13.1 billion, or almost 90 percent of the money gathered by all U.S. ETFs,” reports Christopher Condon for Bloomberg. Pennsylvania-based Vanguard has hauled in more than seven times as much cash into its ETFs this year as the rest of the industry combined, according to Bloomberg.
Vanguard finished the first quarter with $351.1 billion in ETF assets, well behind the $673.1 billion held by BlackRock’s (NYSE: BLK) iShares unit. State Street’s (NYSE: STT) State Street Global Advisors is the second-largest U.S. ETF sponsor with $379.5 billion in ETF assets. Invesco’s (NYSE: IVZ) PowerShares is the only other U.S. ETF issuer currently residing close to $100 billion in ETF assets.
Lead by the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (NYSEArca: VGK), six Vanguard ETFs rank among the top-10 asset gatherers this year. With VGK in the first spot, the top-four ETFs in terms of 2014 inflows are all Vanguard products. Last year, Vanguard pulled in nearly a third of every dollar investors allocated to U.S. ETFs. [Vanguard Keeps Hauling in ETF Cash]
iShares is the only other issuer to have more than one ETF in this year’s top-10 for inflows and Vanguard has just one ETF on the 10 worst outflows list: The Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: VWO).
Vanguard ETFs are popular with investors due in part to robust liquidity and some of the lowest fees in the industry. Earlier this year, the company reduced expenses on five of its ETFs, including VWO. In April 2013, the firm lowered fees on seven ETFs, which followed 22 expense reductions in late 2012.[Vanguard Lowers Fees on Five ETFs]