U.S. Active ETFs Surpass $250 billion in AUM

The active ETF marketplace continued its rapid growth trajectory in Q2, reaching a milestone in June when U.S. assets under management (AUM) crossed $250 billion. In the first half of 2021, 127 new active ETFs launched and 24 issuers entered the market for the first time, bringing the total number of firms with active strategies to 117. This is double the number of issuers in the market from two years ago.

As investors around the world add active ETFs to their portfolios, cash flow in 2021 continues to break records. Cash flow in Q2 totaled $23.64 billion and year-to-date (YTD) cash flow at the end of the quarter reached $58.5 billion, nearing 2020’s full-year total of $60 billion.

After crossing $1 billion in AUM earlier this year, semi-transparent ETFs are rapidly approaching the $2 billion threshold, closing out Q2 at $1.84 billion AUM across 37 funds.

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Mutual Fund to ETF Conversions

Earlier this year, Guinness Atkinson broke new ground by converting two mutual funds into ETFs (ADIV and DIVS) that now trade on NYSE Arca. In Q2, we welcomed five additional conversions from Nottingham and Dimensional Funds. In the third-ever conversion of its kind, Nottingham turned the Adaptive Growth Opportunities Fund into the Adaptive Growth Opportunities ETF (AGOX), which began trading on May 10. Notably, this transition is the first to convert a mutual fund with multiple asset classes into a single-class ETF.

In June, Dimensional Funds executed the largest conversion to date by launching four of its mutual funds as active ETFs on NYSE Arca (DFUS, DFAS, DFAC and DFAT), totaling nearly $30 billion in AUM. These launches propelled Dimensional to now rank as one of the largest ETF issuers in the U.S., and the firm plans to complete additional conversions before year-end.

These conversions represent another exciting growth prospect in the ETF ecosystem and we encourage you to work with the NYSE ETF Team on opportunities for your business.

NYSE Options Markets to Migrate to NYSE Pillar Platform

A top priority for the NYSE transactions business is the seamless migration of NYSE Arca Options to the industry-leading NYSE Pillar trading technology platform in Fall 2021. NYSE Pillar will deliver superior speed, resiliency and rich functionality to our options markets. Since the NYSE migrated its five equities exchanges, including NYSE Arca Equities, to Pillar in 2019, the platform has significantly enhanced processing, determinism and latency on those markets, reducing session latency by up to 95% compared to legacy systems and handling historic volatility in 2020 virtually flawlessly. Following this migration, NYSE American Options and the OPRA data feed will also transition to Pillar in 2022.

NYSE Connect

For members of the NYSE community, NYSE Connect is your one-stop shop for real-time pricing data, market insights and shareholder trend analyses. In addition to custom watch lists, the live NYSE order book and extensive modelling tools, ETF issuers can also access the ETF imbalance feed and short interest availability. If there is additional data or resources that would be valuable to your team, please reach out to [email protected].

Register here for NYSE Connect.

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SEC Approval: ETFs Exempt from Requiring a Shareholder Vote When Acquiring an Affiliated ETF

In May, the SEC approved the NYSE’s proposed rule change to exempt ETF issuers from the requirement to obtain shareholder approval prior to acquiring an affiliated ETF. This change improves the acquisition process for issuers, saving time, money and other valuable resources needed to complete these transactions. As the NYSE continues to work closely with the SEC to streamline approval and go-to-market processes for issuers, this rule change represents an important step in the right direction.