Active Nontransparent ETFs Arrive
Cinthia Murphy, Managing Editor, ETF.com
In a relatively calm week when only about $2.2 billion in net new assets found their way into ETFs, active nontransparent ETFs made their long-awaited debut.
American Century Investments launch the American Century Focused Dynamic Growth ETF (FDG) and the American Century Focused Large Cap Value ETF (FLV) last week. These funds only disclose holdings quarterly, in the most black-box approach yet in an ETF wrapper.
Daily transparency of portfolio holdings has long been one of the ETF structure’s most heralded attributes, but one that has kept active investors and active managers largely at bay (or so some say).
Both FDG and FLV are large cap portfolios, the first investing in about 30-45 companies the manager believes are in “early and rapid stage growth”; the latter invests in 30-50 securities considered to be undervalued or overlooked.
It’s too soon to tell whether adoption will follow, bringing a whole new wave of asset growth to the ETF market. Actively managed ETFs have historically struggled to find much of a following, particularly in the equity space. Today active ETFs represent only about 2.5% of all U.S.-listed ETF assets of about $3.5 trillion, and the biggest successes among active strategies have been in the fixed income segment.
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