Each week, readers can see a few distinct tiers, from the Vanguards and BlackRocks of the world to the upstarts like Dimensional Fund Advisors and First Trust to a whole gauntlet of boutiques and specialist managers in the ETF Issuer League. It’s expected that Vanguard and BlackRock, the latter through its iShares ETF suite, will lead week-to-week in ETF net inflows. It’s rarer to see the third-place position taken by a much smaller asset manager than the mega-firms, in this case, ProShares.
Whereas iShares added $2 billion for the week to its ETF suite and Vanguard added $1 billion to its ETF roster, with the two holding $2.2 billion and about $1.9 billion in ETF AUM, respectively, ProShares saw the third-highest net inflows for the last week at $770 million. There’s a gap between those inflows, certainly, but ProShares can claim the “best of the rest” inflows crown at least for now, and that speaks to their strategies’ mastery of the moment.
ProShares may be seeing inflows for some of its more edge case strategies like the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO ), but it was its ultra suite that led the way over the last seven or so days. The ProShares Ultra S&P 500 ETF (SSO ) added $460 million over the last week while the ProShares Ultra QQQ ETF (QLD ) added $230 million, with the firm’s leveraged strategies adding some powerful flows overall this year.
Those flows could be somewhat fickle given those strategies’ intended use on a daily basis, but ProShares’ gains have been durable overall YTD, with the firm climbing the AUM issuer league standings in the mid-tier of issuers with AUM in the tens of billions.
Elsewhere in that tier, DFA is approaching $80 billion in ETF AUM, another manager that is working hard to climb the rankings into that upper echelon of ETF AUM in the ETF Issuer League. Whether DFA or ProShares, it remains to be seen which firms will make it up into that tier, either through daily leveraged type strategies or other, booming active ETFs.
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