Fidelity sees opportunity in exchange traded fund space as a means to bring actively managed styles from decades of experience out of their active management team into a cheap and efficient investment wrapper.
ETF Trends publisher Tom Lydon spoke with Tony Rochte, President of Fidelity SelectCo, at the Inside ETFs conference that ran Jan. 22-25, 2017 to talk Fidelity’s commitment in the ETF game.
Along with the billions that Fidelity clients have poured into ETF options to gain market exposure, Fidelity also offers a number of cheap sector-specific plays, smart beta or factor based strategies, and a handful of fixed-income options.
While Fidelity is known for its sector bets, the money manager’s relatively new suite of smart beta offerings help bring the active fund manager’s investment styles into a cheap, index-based ETF wrapper.
“If you look, historically, as you know factors actually help diversify your portfolio and they tend to do very well over time,” Rochte said.
Looking at their own fund strategies, Rochte pointed out that factor-based options were growing at an increasingly faster rate than traditional index-based ETFs.
“So we’re meeting a customer demand,” Rochte said. “We’re unique and differentiated, and we’ve launched the fidelity dividend for rising rates (FDRR), our Fidelity core dividend, quality, momentum, value and low volatility.”
Specifically, the Fidelity Dividend ETF for Rising Rates (FDRR), Fidelity Low Volatility Factor ETF (NYSEArca: FDLO), Fidelity Momentum Factor ETF (NYSEArca: FDMO), Fidelity Quality Factor ETF (NYSEArca: FQAL), Fidelity Value Factor ETF (NYSEArca: FVAL) and Fidelity Core Dividend ETF (NYSEArca: FDVV) are five ETFs that leverage decades of analysis and research out of Fidelity’s quant team.
Additionally, Fidelity offers a line of actively managed bond ETFs, including the Fidelity Total Bond ETF (NYSEArca: FBND), Fidelity Limited Term Bond ETF (NYSEArca: FLTB) and the Fidelity Corporate Bond ETF (NYSEArca: FCOR).
“We took the Fidelity total bond mutual fund management team and actually let them run the ETF,” Rochte said.