Small ETFs Struggle as 18 Funds Hold Half of Industry’s Assets

If you’re looking for a reason why many of the ETFs launched last year failed to raise the $30 million in assets necessary to turn a profit and stay open take a look at the $10 Billion Club.

While there are more than $1 trillion in assets in the entire U.S. ETF industry, the majority are confined to about 100 funds, “leaving the other 1,300 ETFs in the dust,” says ETF Database.

Yesterday, I said many investors remain risk-adverse in today’s volatile market, leaving them squeamish about buying into hypertargeted ETPs. They prefer to stick with big, liquid funds tracking well-known indexes both because they understand what the index tracks and because they can get out quickly in an emergency. Other reasons why small, niche funds are having a hard time gathering assets is because institutional investors and investment advisors are restricted to buying products with minumum requirements for assets under management, average daily volume and age of the fund.

This leaves just 18 ETFs holding nearly half the assets of the entire ETF industry, according to ETF Database, which calls the group the $10 billion club because they all have more than that under management.

It’s no surprise who tops the list:

SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)
SPDR Gold Trust (GLD)
Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)
iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund (EFA)
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM)
iShares S&P 500 Index Fund (IVV)
PowerShares QQQ (QQQ)

The big surprises to my eyese were the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund (LDQ) and the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG).

Apple’s Worth More Than Top 5 ETFs Combined

I don’t have anything to say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been said, except that there’s no doubt he was a genius. Much like Apple’s Think Different ad campaign, a genius isn’t just smart, but someone who sees or hears things so differently from the conventional wisdom that he completely changes the paradigm. While Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker didn’t invent jazz, the BeBop they created was a sound so completely different than what had come before that they forever changed the way jazz was played. So while Jobs didn’t create the personal computer, MP3 player or the cell phone, his vision completely changed the way those industries operate.

Over the course of the many Steve Jobs accolades, I stumbled upon the fact that Apple’s market capitalization, at around $355 billion, is larger than the 5 largest ETFs combined. At the end of September, that was $247.5 billion, according to the National Stock Exchange.

The top five ETFs in order of size are:
SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) – $81.2 billion
SPDR Gold (GLD) – $64.1 billion
Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets (VWO) – $39.8 billion
iShares MSCI EAFE (EFA) – $35.0 billion
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) $27.5 billion.

Apple’s stock movement alone has more of an impact on the stock market than there five combined. Which I think nicely puts into perspective the common fallacy that ETFs have the potential to destroy the market.

Fund Manager Says Sell High Yield and Emerging Markets

Frank Barbera, portfolio manager of the Sierra Core Retirement Fund, last week chatted with me about the market. Barbera runs a fund of funds that is very risk adverse and seeks to protect capital in a down market. During the 2008 crash, his fund fell just 2.8% vs. the 37% plunge in the S&P 500.

Over the last few weeks, Barbera has see such a decline in high-yield bonds that he’s exited all his positions and is now cutting back on emerging-market debt. He also sold all his holdings in emerging-markets equities, such as iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM).

Barbera says anything linked to China has experienced a substantial decline, with emerging markets posting poor relative strength for the past six months. “There’s been no bounce,” he says, “We think Asia might slow down from both rising interest rates and higher-than-reported inflation.”

Because China’s currency is pegged to the U.S. dollar, he says our low interest rate policy is being exported to Asia and causing a lot of instability. Asia’s inflation problem and the enormous housing boom in Asia and Australia are a result of the U.S.’s loose monetary policy.

“With the reckless lending practices in those real-estate markets, we are preparing for a big downturn,” says Barbera. “Something is going to give and give big.”

He says the estimates for China’s bad loans could be as high as $5 trillion, which is nearly 100% of China’s GDP, sparking a deep recession and very hard landing. He adds that areas with strong real-estate markets, such as Australia , Hong Kong and Vancouver could soon deflate and see significant slow down.

He recommends getting rid of high-yield bonds and emerging-market debt and equities and says it’s time to move into short-term high-grade AAA corporate bonds.

Last month, I wrote about getting out of iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG) and the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF (JNK). Since then HYG has gained 2.2% and JNK 1%.

For short-term high-grade bond ETFs check out Barclays 1-3 Year Credit Bond Fund (CSJ), which has an expense ratio of 0.2%, and the SPDR Barclays Capital Short Term Corporate Bond ETF (SCPB), which charges 0.125%

If Korea Becomes a Developed Nation

Index providers put a lot of time and effort into deciding whether countries are classified as developed or emerging nations.

The choice, to an outsider, seems simple. The U.S. is a developed country, and China is emerging. But breaking that down into a rule-set is more of a challenge. Each of the major index providers looks at a different set of criteria to make its determination.

With billions of dollars tied to each market, these classification systems matter, and countries lobby index providers hard to convince them that they meet this or that criteria.

For ETF investors, the index provider that matters most in this regard is MSCI, which dominates the market for both developed and emerging market international ETFs. MSCI has an annual review process for evaluating economic development status based on economic development, size and liquidity requirements, and market accessibility criteria. It maintains watch lists of countries that are under consideration for status changes.

In the middle of 2010, Israel jumped from emerging to developed status in the MSCI system, as it finally was judged to fully meet MSCI’s criteria for developed markets. Based on a 2008 consultation report from MSCI, the country’s graduation was primarily held up by concerns about market accessibility, but currently, the only remaining issue of concern, MSCI says, is the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s settlement cycle, which is shorter than is normal for a developed market. The issue is considered a minor one and did not prevent the country’s promotion to developed status.

Among other things, the promotion pushed Israel out of the broadly followed MSCI Emerging Markets Index and into the pre-eminent benchmark for measuring developed international equity performance, the MSCI EAFE (Europe, Australasia and the Far East).

Investors always want to know what will happen to a country’s market when a graduation event takes place. Viewed from a static ETF-only lens, the answer is simple. On April 30, 2010, there was roughly $60 billion in ETF money invested in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index via the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM). Israel had a 4 percent weight in the index, meaning the funds likely had in the area of $2.4 billion invested in Israeli equities at the time. When MSCI promoted Israel, those funds had to sell.

The next countries likely to graduate in the MSCI system may be bigger deals. In both 2009 and 2010, MSCI decided after careful review to leave both South Korea and Taiwan in the emerging markets index. They won’t be up for review again until June 2011. If chosen, they would make the switch in the middle of 2012. If that happens, MSCI would have to decide whether to make the transition over a period of time in a step process, or all at once.

Both countries meet many of the requirements MSCI has of developed nations. Korea satisfies the criteria in economic development, size and liquidity, but it fails on three levels: the lack of an offshore currency market for the Korean won; investor accessibility; and continued anti-competitive practices. With no active offshore currency market, investors need to exchange their money into won during Korean trading hours in order to trade. However, the limited trading hours means Korea’s market is mostly closed when Western markets are open. Meanwhile, a rigid identification system limits investor accessibility in the use of omnibus accounts. For instance, instead of Fidelity Investments having one account, it needs to set up separate accounts for each mutual fund that wants to trade in Korea, creating a very inefficient system. Finally, stock market data continues to be subject to contractual anti-competitive practices as a way to keep trades on the Korean market.

Taiwan also meets the economic development criteria, along with the size and liquidity requirements. However, market participants have said Taiwan’s overall market accessibility is comparable with that of Korea’s. MSCI said the “lack of full convertibility of the new Taiwan Dollar and restrictions associated with the Foreign Institutional Investors identification system were raised as areas where significant progress is still required.”

But if South Korea and Taiwan resolve these issues, the impact will be large.

For the full story go to IndexUniverse.com.

9 ETFs Make Up 18% of Total U.S. Volume

Abel/Noser, an agency-only broker, released a market liquidity study for July saying ETFs dominated trading on the U.S. stock markets, with nine ETFs representing 18% of the total daily domestic volume, reports StreetInsider.com.

Those nine ETFs were: the SPDR (SPY), iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM), PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), UltraShort S&P500 ProShares (SDS), iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA), Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) and Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (FAS).

According to the July ETF Report released by the National Stock Exchange today, the top five ETF providers in terms of volume, in descending order, are State Street Global Advisors, BlackRock, ProShares, Direxion and Invesco/PowerShares. Together, their share volume for the month of July was 27.6 billion shares, or 54% of the NYSE Group Volume in all stocks traded, 50.6 billion shares. This number doesn’t include Nasdaq volume.

In addition, Abel/Noser said six stocks accounted for more than 10% of the domestic principal traded. The six stocks: Apple, Bank of America, Citigroup, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil and Intel.

The top 105 stocks represented more than half of the day’s volume, says the study, while the top 975 names accounted for 90% of all the volume. The renaming 17,399 securities accounted for just 10% of the daily volume on the market. These numbers were little changed from June.

Six New Funds Track Emerging Markets

Updated 10 p.m.

In light of the huge inflows moving into emerging markets over the past two months, this past week saw the launch a total of six new ETFs to capture the trend. Typically, it takes three to six months for the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve a new ETF from a current ETF provider. So, these funds are a mixture of good foresight and the luck of good timing.

Two weeks ago, this blog reported that large-cap U.S. equity ETFs experienced heavy outflows last month, while emerging market ETF saw huge cash inflows.

Emerging markets go one step beyond with the first U.S. ETF to track the Peruvian markets. The iShares MSCI All Peru Capped Index Fund (EPU) began trading today on NYSE Arca. The fund tracks the index of the same name, which holds the top 25 Peruvian equity securities by free-float adjusted market cap. The index components are either in Peru, headquartered in Peru or have the majority of their operations based in Peru. Thirteen constituents are materials producers, providing significant exposure to commodities. Top three index constituent names as of March 31 are Buenaventura Minas, Southern Copper, and Credicorp. The expense ratio is 0.63%.

iShares quotes the IMF World Economic Outlook Database which this month said Peru has the fastest growing economy in Latin America and one of the lowest inflation rates in the region. The IMF also said Peru has the third lowest Emerging Market Bond Index spread in Latin America and an estimated economic growth rate of 3.5% in 2009. Peru’s Minister of Finance this month said Peruvian capital markets posted the best performance globally year to date in 2009. Can anyone verify this?

Friday saw the launch of the iShares S&P Emerging Markets Infrastructure Index Fund (EMIF) on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The eponymous index holds 30 of the largest publicly-listed companies in the infrastructure industries — energy, transportation and utilities — with the majority of their revenues derived from emerging market operations. Each constituents had a minimum market capitalization of $250 million. As of May 29, the index was comprised of companies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea and the United Arab Emigrates. The annual expense ratio of 0.75%.

Meanwhile, if you think emerging market are due for a tumble, ProShares gave international investors a chance to short these markets with leveraged short ETFs that offer -200% returns. Thursday’s launches on the NYSE Arca doubled ProShares ultrashort international ETFs to eight:

• ProShares UltraShort MSCI Europe (EPV)
• ProShares UltraShort MSCI Pacific ex-Japan (JPX)
• ProShares UltraShort MSCI Brazil (BZQ)
• ProShares UltraShort MSCI Mexico Investable Market (SMK)

Earlier this month, ProShares launched the first of its 200% leveraged international ETF series with four similar funds. The new ETFs charge a managament fee of 0.95%.

For the four months ended April 30, iShares received 65% of all ETF and mutual fund emerging markets flows year-to-date, according to Strategic Insight. That shouldn’t have been difficult considering more than 70 of the more than 180 U.S. listed iShares ETFs have an international bent. This gives iShares the largest continent of international ETFs in the industry. Trading volumes in iShares emerging markets funds surged 119% for the five months ended May 30, compared with the same period last year to 16 billion shares.

According to iShares and Bloomberg, the ETFs with the hightest net inflows in May were

• iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund (EWZ) with $1.5 billion in net new assets under management.
• iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM) with $1.08 billion new AUM.
• iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index Fund (FXI) with $1.02 billion new AUM.

Here’s an interesting tidbit about the lack of info coming from ProShares. IndexUniverse reportes that “ProShares’ Web site only provides data of the underlying indexes. Besides the prospectus for each, that’s the most recent detailed information available. And the benchmark data is only through March 31. Daily holdings are listed in totals of swaps held in the underlying index and cash.”

IndexUniverse does a nice break down of the ProShares international shorts.

Net Cash Inflows Double; Large-Caps Lose, Emerging Markets Win

Net cash inflows into all exchange-traded funds (ETF) and exchange-traded notes (ETN) grew to approximately $17.1 billion in May, doubling April’s total, according to the National Stock Exchange (NSX). Despite the huge inflow overall, ETFs holding large-capitalization indexes such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Russell 1000 posted significant cash outflows. Meanwhile, emerging-market ETFs recorded huge net inflows.

iShares remained the top ETF firm with $290 billion in assets under management. State Street Global Advisors came in second with half that, $142 billion. Vanguard took third at $54 billion. PowerShares’ $31 billion came in fourth and ProShares $26 billion claimed fifth.

The SPDR Trust (SPY) remained the king with $63 billion in assets. SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) came in second with a distant $35 billion.

I noticed a trend of heavy net cash outflows from the large-cap U.S. equity funds. So, even as the market rose in May, the SPDR saw $146 million flow out in May. The PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq 100 and is the sixth-largest ETF, had outflows of $435 million. Meanwhile, $639 million was pulled out of the Dow Diamonds (DIA), which tracks the Dow industrials. Surprisingly, the iShares S&P 500, (IVV) which also tracks the S&P 500 and is the fifth-largest ETF, saw net cash inflows of $441 million. However, all the iShares ETFs that track the Russell 1000 or an offshoot also saw outflows. Does this mean that traders think the U.S. stock market has peaked and have taken profits? I wouldn’t be surprised.

That money appears to be moving into emerging markets. The iShares MSCO-Emerging Markets (EEM) took honors as the third-largest ETF upon receipt of $1 billion in cash inflows in May. The only ETF with more net inflows was the iShares MSCI Brazil (EWZ) with $1.5 billion.

Year-to-date net cash inflows totaled approximately $29.8 billion, led by fixed income, commodity, and short U.S. equity based ETF products, says the NSX. Assets in U.S. listed ETF/ETNs grew 10% sequentially to approximately $594.3 billion at the end of May. The number of listed products totaled 829, compared with 767 listed products a year ago. This data and more can be found in the NSX May 2009 Month-End ETF/ETN Data Report.

ETFs See Cash Inflows Even as Asset Values Fall

ETFs and ETNs continue to see net cash inflows even as total assets under management fall. The conclusion is this is a function of just falling asset values.

According to the National Stock Exchange (NSX), at the end of November, total U.S. listed ETF and ETN assets fell 16.8% to $487.6 billion from $585.8 billion in November 2007. However, net cash inflows for the month were $26.4 billion, bringing the total net cash flow for the 11 months through Nov. 30 to $136.8 billion. In November, 315 ETFs saw net cash inflows, while 179 saw outflows. ETNs split at 16 each.

Notional trading volume in both ETFs and ETNs fell 33% in November from October to $2.2 trillion. Surprisingly, this represents a record 43% of all U.S. equity trading volume, up from 38% in October. That just shows how much total equity volume must have fallen off. At the end of November 2008, the number of listed products totaled 843, compared with 650 listed products one year ago and 806 in October.
According to the NSX, the only ETF firms that saw assets grow are State Street Global Advisers, ProShares, Van Eck and

Ameristock/Victoria Bay. All those firms saw net cash inflows for the year through Nov. 30 increase compared with the first 11 months of 2007. Vanguard did as well. ProShares’s assets under management rocketed 112% to $20.9 billion. SSGA’s assets grew 8.3% to $142.9 billion. This really shouldn’t be a surprise. ProShares sponsors the inverse and leveraged ETFs that have proved hugely popular in the market turmoil. SSGA sells the largest, most liquid ETF, the SPDR (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500. Many investors making a flight to safety or seeking a place to hold cash on a temporary basis will move to the S&P 500. Even as the S&P 500 sinks, the SPDR’s 2008 net cash inflows have surged 86% year-over-year through Nov. 30 to $18.23 billion.

Meanwhile, BGI’s iShares saw assets tumbled 29% to $229.3 billion.

Firms with net cash outflows in November included PowerShares, $309 million, and Merrill Lynch’s HOLDRs, which saw redemptions of $889 million. Surprisingly, the HOLDRs saw net cash outflows of $3.6 billion in 2007, but are up $1.2 billion so far this year. Other firms that experienced outflows in November were WisdomTree, FirstTrust, and SPA-ETF. Firms with net outflows year-to-date include Bank of New York, Rydex, X-Shares, Ziegler, FocusShares and BearStearns. The last two have gone out of business this year. Rydex is suffering as the strengthening dollar hurts its CurrencyShares.

As for ETNs, Barclay’s iPath family saw assets plunge 36% to $2.6 billion. In November, iPath saw outflows of $39 million. Morgan Stanley/Van Eck ETNs recorded outflows of $16 million in November. Meanwhile, Goldman Sach’s ETNs net cash outflows grew to $97 million year-to-date. Comparisons are not relevant for many of the other ETN firms as they had few funds, if any, last year.

Among the top ten ETFs and ETNs, the SPDR (SPY), iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund (EFA), SPDR Equity Gold (GLD), iShares S&P 500 Index Fund (IVV), iShares Russell 1000 Growth Index Fund (IWF) and iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund (IWM) all saw net cash inflows in November, according the NSX. Of the 10 largest funds, these saw outflows last month: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM), PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ), iShares Barclays Aggregate Bond Fund (AGG) and the Dow Diamonds (DIA).

The NYSE Group also releases volume data for its exchanges. Average daily matched volume for ETFs, or the total number of shares of ETFs executed on the entire NYSE Group’s exchanges surged 93.5% to 672 million shares from 347 million shares in November 2007. Total matched volume for the month totaled 12,765 million shares, a 75.1% increase. Total volume year-to-date through Nov. 30 jumped 74.7% from the same period last year to 102,583 million shares.

Handled volume, which represents the total number of shares of equity securities and ETFs internally matched on the NYSE Group’s exchanges or routed to and executed at an external market center, totaled 14,813 million shares last month, a 77.6% surge over the year-ago month. Average daily handled volume rocketed 96.3% to 780 million shares from 397 million shares a year ago. Year-to-date total volume climbed 78.1% to 117,629 million shares.

The NYSE also reported total ETF consolidated volume for the month leapt 92.1% to 45,151 million shares, while total average daily volume soared 112.3% to 2,376 million shares. Year-to-date, total consolidated ETF volume surged 119.4% over the first 11 months of 2007 to 355,133 million shares. I think those refer just to the NYSE Group.