ETF Gurus

March flows are in, and they were pretty stellar, putting ETFs back on track for a strong year.  InsideETFs Matt Hougan joins me to talk about the winners and losers in this decidedly “risk-on” comeback.

I’m joined by good friend Matt Hougan, CEO of Inside ETFs, to talk about the dramatically different ETF fund flows picture were seeing in 2016 so far — not just risk off, risk gone!

With a highly volatile start to the year, ETF investors are moving into defensive equities, and looking for other, sometimes exotic ways to prosper.  I sit down with Todd Rosenbluth from S&P Capital IQ to talk about the right and wrong ways to go “Risk Off.”

I’m just back from Inside ETFs 2016 and it was a doozy.  I’m joined by Inside ETFs CEO Matt Hougan to talk about our big takeaways from the conference: Smart Beta, professional investors, the absence of Robo Advisors and the lackluster January 2016 flows.

2015 was a big year in ETFs, missing the high water mark for inflows set by 2014 by just a tiny amount.  Matt Hougan from ETF.com sits down with me to talk about the winners and losers in the asset race, and some predictions for who carries the torch in 2016.

This week I chatted with Todd Rosenbluth from S&P Capital IQ about the SEC’s recent activity around derivatives, the current state of fixed income, and what 2016 is going to hold in store for the ETF investor.

In the wake of major fee cuts by Blackrock and Schwab, I sit down with Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas to talk about the reasons behind the battle for cheap, and whether it’s sustainable.

Todd Rosenbluth from S&P Capital IQ has some interesting ideas on how to evaluate newly listed ETFs, especially those making claims of outperformance.

Ari Weinberg returns to talk about firms like Goldman Sachs, John Hancock and NYLife getting into the ETF space. Is this old guard coming in with new tricks? You can read Ari’s work at P&I Magazine and in the Wall Street Journal.

The SEC just rolled out a sweeping set of proposals for how ETFs and Mutual Funds manage liquidity risk in their portfolios (all 400+ pages available at https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2015/33-9922.pdf) … The real issue will be unintended consequences.  I sit down with ETF.com’s Matt Hougan to dig into the details.

August ETF flows were anemic, but there were still interesting stories to pull out of the data.  I sit down with ETF.com CEO Matt Hougan to find the nuggets of gold in a placid stream.

August 24th was a crazy day, with dozens of ETFs disconnecting from fair value amid cascading trading halts.  Todd Rosenbluth from S&P Capital IQ and I try to make some sense of the insanity.

This week I welcome back Todd Rosenbluth from S&P Capital IQ.  Todd and I have both written about some of the misconceptions around High Yield Bond ETFs, and decided to hash it out on the mic.

The hedging juggernaut continues, but there are some real surprises in this first half of 2015.  Matt Hougan from ETF.com joins me to run through the winners and losers, and what they say about investor sentiment and the shifting ETF marketplace.

The SEC recently published a list of 53 questions about ETPs, covering everything from listing requirements to brokers’ sales practices.  I sit down with Ari Weinberg, freelance journalist to the Wall St. Journal and Pensions & Investments, to dig into the juiciest of them and try and glean what the SEC may really be trying to accomplish here.

With FTSE adding A-Shares to core emerging markets indexes, and MSCI giving them a pass, I could think of nobody better than Mr. “Under-the-Hood” himself — Todd Rosenbluth of S&P Capital IQ — to help explain what this means for ETF investors.

This week I’m joined by Tom Lydon, founder and publisher of high-profile ETF news website, ETFTrends.com.  We sit down to talk about the rash of new entrants that are on the horizon, and some of the challenges they may face getting traction.

May ETF flows are out, and they’re super interesting.  According to FactSet Research Systems, the $12 billion in new money went almost exclusively into international equities — and not into the hedged variety for the most part.  Michael Johnston of ETFReference.com (formerly of ETFdb) and I dig into the reasons why, and highlight some of the biggest winners (Vanguard) and losers (bonds and gold) in this month’s data.

Currency Hedged ETFs have been the success story of the past few years, at least as far as ETF asset gathering has been concerned.  With new products launching seemingly every week, from hedged low-vol to hedged high-yield dividends, can there be too much of a good thing? This week I sit down with my good friend Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg — one of the smartest ETF Gurus out there — to talk about the rise of these unique products, and how they may pose a few hiccups to investors who stumble blindly into them.

It’s only fitting that the first episode of ETF gurus feature my longtime colleague, Matt Hougan, CEO of ETF.com. This week we tackle the ins and outs of the newly launched Accushares volatility products: VXUP and VXDN. A re-imagined version of the old MacroShares products, they’re a pair of bets on the CBOE volatility index that aim to track spot VIX, something nobody’s been able to acheive yet.  THey’re cool, but they’re also complex and not for the faint of heart, so buckle up!