A fund that we have profiled here before since its inception in mid-2011 continues to impress in terms of its ability to raise assets, FLOT (iShares Floating Rate Bond, Expense Ratio 0.20%), as it has taken in $2.9 billion year to date boosting its total AUM above $3.3 billion.
Daily average trading volume has bloomed as well to north of 860,000 shares.
The fund is by far the largest in its niche category of Floating Rate Bond ETFs, where there are two other much smaller players FLRN (SPDR Barclays Capital Investment Grade Floating Rate, Expense Ratio 0.15%) and FLTR (Market Vectors Investment Grade Floating Rate, Expense Ratio 0.19%) with $335 million and $64 million in AUM respectively.
However these are respectable asset levels considering the longest tenured fund on the market in this space FLTR launched in April of 2011. [Floating-Rate ETF Hauls in Cash]
FLOT by design has exposure to “bonds whose coupon payments change based on prevailing short term interest rates (mainly financial issuers)”.
That verbiage is timely and important of course, amid the current scenario of interest rate volatility that prevails in the marketplace.