Get Ready for Darwinian Struggle for ETF Survival
Get Ready for Darwinian Struggle for ETF Survival
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Few people are as knowledgeable about the plumbing underlying how exchange-traded funds are assembled and maintained as David Nadig, this week's guest on Masters in Business. He helped to design some of the first ETFs; as co-founder of Cerulli Associates, he conducted some of the earliest research on fee-only financial advisers and the rise of indexing; and he now is managing director of Cboe Global Markets Inc.’s ETF.com.
During our interview we discuss the odd legal structure of ETFGs -- ETFs tied to global indexes -- and that in order to even exist they require a special waiver from the Securities Exchange Commission. The SEC is expected to change these rules in order to make the creation of ETFs less expensive and more predictable. ETFs will retain the advantages they hold over mutual funds, namely, a tax structure that doesn't create phantom capital gains the way mutual funds can.
Nadig also discussed why three companies -- BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and State Street Corp. -- dominate the ETF universe. There now are more than 2,300 ETFs, and a Darwinian battle for survival is brewing for many of them.
His favorite books are here.
Next week, we speak with David Hunt, chief executive officer of PGIM Inc., the asset-management arm of Prudential Financial.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net
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Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”
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