The Major League All-Star Game was two weeks ago. One of the rituals of baseball is checking out the league tables to see how teams are doing. In turn, we will look at the league tables for U.S. ETF issuers and see who is doing well and who is underperforming. This note will look at the 28 issuers who have at least $100 billion in AUM, accounting for 97% of all ETF AUM. We will look at data from the last eight years.
The “Major League”
U.S. ETF AUM has more than tripled since 2016. In fact, it has grown by 3.7 times. The five largest issuers by ETF AUM – iShares, Vanguard, State Street, Invesco, and Schwab – are generally doing about the same as they were in 2016. These companies are all mega-huge financial firms that have been in the ETF space for a long time. Schwab entered most recently in 2009.
These five firms all accumulated significant assets; however, given their advantages, it is hard to say that most of them were really knocking it out of the ballpark. The exception is Schwab, as its AUM grew more than 6x in eight years. However, Schwab also has an advantage as the dominant brokerage platform.
Major Players Hitting the Ball Hard
In addition to the five names above, three other issuers have over $100 billion in AUM, with each of them hitting the ball hard in its own way. JP Morgan and Dimensional Fund Advisors are interesting because they have grown to be in this top tier in such a short amount of time. In 10 years, JP Morgan has gone from zero to over $150 billion in AUM, while DFA has gone from zero to $150 billion in under four years.
Yes, both firms had huge asset bases to use to gain this critical mass. They could make use of converting large mutual funds into ETFs, but it requires one other thing besides the ability to BYOA (“Bring Your Own Assets”). It requires a major commitment on the part of senior management. As we will see, that is not a given.
First Trust grew its AUM in line with the industry. However, the interesting thing is that of all the $100+ billion AUM issuers, First Trust is the only one that is not part of a giant financial service company. First Trust’s ability to hang with the big boys is noteworthy and a testament to its intense sales culture focused on servicing the financial advisors who use First Trust ETFs.
“AAA” League
The flip side of the commitment component appears lower down in the league table in the group with $10 billion to $100 billion in AUM. This group includes four very large financial firms that got into the ETF space a while ago and, unlike DFA and JP Morgan, are completely hitting below their abilities. Northern Trust was a $1 trillion AUM firm when it launched FlexShares in 2011. They quickly grew AUM to the $10+ billion level, heavily using BYOA, and then their bats went silent.
In the last eight years, FlexShares has only been able to double its AUM, reaching $20 billion. It suggests that whatever commitment they had from senior management at the start quickly dried up. However, in the tradition of underperforming baseball clubs, FlexShares has made trade moves to bring in new blood.
First, it added long-time ETF veteran Daniel Gamba from iShares to its team. More recently, it brought in ETF guru Dave Abner, formerly of WisdomTree. This may signal a completely new re-commitment to the ETF space.
Franklin Templeton, which had $800 billion in firmwide AUM when it entered the ETF space in 2013, has shown no such initiative. It took many years for Franklin Templeton to climb to the $10 billion level. Today, the firm is only at $19 billion.
A similar tale of woe comes from fixed income giant PIMCO. The issuer launched its first ETFs in 2009. As of eight years ago, PIMCO only had $12 billion in ETF AUM. They have slightly more than doubled that amount as of now.
Finally, Xtrackers has only gone from $14 billion to $21 billion in eight years.
“AAA” League Issuers Garnering Significant Assets
Several other large recent entries from the mutual fund world blew by Franklin and Northern Trust on the League Table.
Capital Group entered the space in 2022 and now has almost $35 billion, driven by client demand, showing a commitment to the space.
American Century/Avantis also only launched ETFs in 2018 and has already garnered nearly $50 billion in AUM. This is impressive since American Century, a $100+ billion mutual fund manager in 2018, was never the giant that many of these other firms are and did not rely on BYOA.
Second-Tier Issuers Delivering Unsurprising Results
There are of course several second-tier issuers that are roughly hitting it at about what one might expect. VanEck, WisdomTree, ProShares, Janus Henderson, and Direxion have all done just a bit below or above the industry average. They seem caught between the difficulties of competing with the giants, while also being large enough that a single successful product may not move the needle like it would for smaller firms.
Mega-big firms Goldman Sachs and Fidelity are also in this middle-performing ground. Goldman launched its first ETF in 2015 and, although $35 billion is nothing to sneeze at, one might have expected more from a company with Goldman’s pedigree after nine years. Like Northern Trust, Goldman engineered a mid-season trade and is bringing in Byron Lake from JP Morgan to bolster its efforts.
Fidelity has a nice $80 billion in AUM, up from $4 billion eight years ago, but its most similar peer, Schwab, pulled in $290 billion in that same time frame (and currently has roughly $359 billion in assets). For both Goldman and Fidelity, so far it can be summed up as good, but not exactly Babe Ruth numbers.
Who among the other sub-$100 billion firms is hitting the cover off the ball? Pacer, FT Vest, and Innovator have all grown from next to nothing eight years ago to $46 billion, $30 billion, and $19 billion, respectively. Their success was driven largely by having novel products.
In the case of Pacer, ETFs focused on corporate cash flow. FT Vest and Innovator focused on products that use option overlays to produce certain types of outcomes.
Long-time ETF issuer Global X has also grown its AUM 8x in eight years. However, it did so primarily by drawing in assets into existing ETFs. Less innovation and home runs, and just more solid hitting and base running.
ARK Is Unpredictable With Wild Swings in AUM
We have one last $10+ billion player: ARK. However, if we look at their wild AUM swings and use a baseball analogy, ARK is like a batter who both leads the league in home runs every year but also leads the league in strikeouts. Just a bit hard to categorize.
We are leaving out Grayscale for this note because they are brand new to the space.
“I’ve worked with hundreds of ETF issuers – including all those referenced here. The key to success for issuers lies in strategic innovation and relentless commitment, particularly at the highest levels,” says Laura Morrison, renowned for building the ETF Listings businesses at iconic brands such as NYSE and Cboe.
Those who embrace change, consistently innovate, and show unwavering dedication to the ETF space are the ones hitting home runs and staying in the game. Conversely, even the strongest firms can strike out without these qualities, despite having significant initial advantages and several at-bats.
Looking at the winners, it seems that in ETFs, as in baseball, you need to either come up with a new and interesting pitch or you need management to be committed to winning and be willing to bring in the right players to make that happen.
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