Nate Geraci hosted a live ETF Prime episode from the Exchange conference in Las Vegas. The panel featured discussions on active ETFs and industry trends with Dimensional’s Wes Krill, and a roundtable of experts.
Krill, senior client solutions director at Dimensional, highlighted the firm’s milestone growth. Dimensional recently crossed $1 trillion in total assets and now ranks as the seventh largest ETF issuer with approximately $260 billion in ETF assets across 41 products. Sixteen of those ETFs generated at least $1 billion in net flows in each of the last two calendar years.
Geraci and Krill discussed the ETF share class structure, which Dimensional has championed. Krill called it a “win” for investors, as it allows them to focus on the investment proposition rather than the wrapper. The structure offers potential economies of scale, more efficient rebalancing due to diverse cash flows, and enhanced tax efficiency.
The conversation turned to product proliferation, with more than 900 active ETFs launched last year alone. Krill warned that many flows have moved into “defined outcome” or “derivative income” funds carrying average expense ratios of 75 basis points to 80 basis points.
He suggested that these may be unnecessary if similar volatility mitigation can be achieved cost-effectively through traditional bond portfolios. Krill emphasized that investing “should be pretty boring,” and compared it to watching grass grow.
Roundtable Tackles Prediction Markets, Rising Fees
A roundtable with Cinthia Murphy, investment strategist at VettaFi, James Seyffart, senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, and Ben Johnson, head of client solutions at Morningstar, explored the blurring lines between investing and gambling.
Johnson highlighted the industry’s move toward repackaging prediction markets into ETFs, calling them purely speculative and potentially a “negative or zero sum” game for investors.
Seyffart noted that for the first time, the industry’s asset-weighted fee ticked up from 17 basis points to 18 basis points, driven by the influx of higher-cost active and thematic products. Of more than 1,100 new products last year, 84% involved some form of active management, he added.
The panel discussed sector trends, with Seyffart reporting that the first-quarter 2026 leaderboard is “upside down” compared to recent years. Energy leads, followed by materials and industrials.
On crypto adoption, Murphy noted that 52% of advisors surveyed by VettaFi report allocating to crypto in client portfolios, despite skepticism about bitcoin’s role as “digital gold.”
Regarding international equities, Johnson warned against “performance chasing” and recommended implementing a disciplined rebalancing strategy to maintain target allocations.
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