It’s been a strong last few months for Avantis Investors, the brand from American Century Investments, with its largest ETF by AUM now approaching a new milestone of $6 billion in AUM. The small-cap value ETF, the Avantis U.S. Small Cap Value ETF (AVUV), currently sits at $5.95 billion in AUM, having added $247 million in just the last week, according to VettaFi — and as investors look for small-cap exposures, it could be ready to make the leap.
It’s pretty good to be a small-cap value ETF right now looking at the data — according to YCharts, small-cap value ETFs have returned 6.8% YTD. That’s more than some other equity sleeves that have been popular to start the year like diversified emerging markets ETFs, which have returned just 3.9% YTD, and China region ETFs, which have returned 3% YTD. Small-cap value ETFs have also seen the sixth-largest net inflows over the last month, with $1.7 billion coming into strategies like AVUV.
AVUV may also be benefitting from its leading status in the tight-knit family of small-cap value ETFs — it’s quite large at almost $6 billion, and although it’s not as large as the Vanguard Small Cap Value ETF (VBR) at $25.7 billion, AVUV has outperformed VBR on a YTD basis, returning 7.6%.
AVUV is actively managed and charges 25 basis points, selecting small-cap value securities based on fundamental factors like shares outstanding, cash flow, revenue, expenses, and price-to-book value. AVUV looks to provide the benefits of indexing with the added boost of active management to help identify particularly appealing opportunities.
Given its liquidity and its relatively low fee for an active strategy, AVUV may offer investors an opportunity to sharpen their ETF trading skills, looking at when and how best to trade the strategy. AVUV is also not the only small-cap strategy available to investors from Avantis, either, as the small-cap world looks to benefit from their maneuverability in tough times.
AVUV may soon hit that $6 billion milestone, making it far and away the largest strategy from American Century’s Avantis Investors’ brand. With its active approach to providing the benefits of indexing, investors may want to keep an eye on the ETF in the next few weeks.
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