(Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc. plans to add factor-based commodity exchange-traded products to its lineup, extending the firm’s focus on the data-driven investing style.
The world’s largest asset manager will initially add two broad commodity ETPs, according to a release Friday. It will label these products “exchange-traded commodities.”
The firm has been putting more energy into factors after hiring Columbia finance professor Andrew Ang in 2015. Its factor-based investing platform, which Ang leads, manages more than $200 billion globally in active and index products. Factor investing zeroes in on traits that affect stock or bond prices, with categories like , growth and momentum.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley will serve as index providers for the commodities strategies, along with a third-party calculation agent, BlackRock said.
BlackRock is the world’s largest issuer of exchange-traded funds with $1.8 trillion in assets in its iShares ETFs, accounting for nearly one-third of the New York-based firm’s total assets under management.
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