Investors were arguably hasty in their departures from discretionary ETFs. The Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLY) hit an all-time high on Thursday and is up 3% over the past month. [Opportunity With Discretionary ETFs]
Sector ETFs are increasingly popular with advisors and investors, but with that growth has come intense competition. At the end of last year, there was over $310 billion allocated to sector ETFs. Over the trailing 12 months, ETFs for 11 sectors (when breaking real estate out as its own sector) have gained assets, according to State Street data.
State Street, the largest purveyor of sector ETFs, recently lowered the fees on the nine sector SPDRs to 0.15% per year from 0.16%. Last week, the issuer said it trimmed fees on 41 of its other ETFs across multiple asset classes, including fixed income, emerging markets and low volatility funds. That announcement featured some notable expense ratio reductions with several of the ETFs seeing their fees cut by 50% or more. Ten other ETFs affected by that announcement now have annual fees of 0.4%, down from 0.5%. [SSgA Pares Fees on 41 ETFs]
Table Courtesy: State Street Global Advisors
ETF Trends editorial team contributed to this post.