Passive & Indexing: archive
Every Passive & Indexing story in ETFs, newest first. 84 stories
1 story
VettaFi defense ETF article uses Invesco PPA and its SPADE Defense Index
The Oct. 22 piece discloses VettaFi receives an index licensing fee for PPA and describes the index's 10% single-stock cap.
1 story
FTSE Russell proposes moving 74% of Russell 1000 market cap to its growth index
The value index would narrow to roughly a quarter of the large-cap gauge and add price-to-sales to its screening inputs; responses are due Dec. 11.
2 stories
MSCI opens consultation on dropping Indonesia from emerging markets
Indonesia's main stock gauge fell 16% over two sessions after the proposal; the country was less than 0.5% of EEM's weight as of Oct. 16.
Invesco 0-5 Year US TIPS ETF charges 0.07% fee and has 2.32-year duration
The ETF holds 25 AA-rated securities, yields 4.05% and has $244.8 million in assets, according to an ETF Trends article on an Invesco-sponsored hub.
1 story
Nasdaq to disseminate three AI Select indexes from Oct. 16
The Australian-dollar lines carry tickers NQINTLX, NQINTLXT and NQINTLXN and differ only by return treatment.
1 story
ETF Express column argues index rules, not managers, choose BOTZ holdings
The column says BOTZ holds only Nvidia among the dominant US tech names and adds Fanuc, Keyence and ABB.
1 story
Northern Trust's SKOR ETF tops $1 billion after $247 million inflow
The fund charges 0.15% and tracks the Northern Trust US Corporate Bond Index.
1 story
VettaFi announces acquisition of the SPADE Defense Index tracked by Invesco's PPA
The 21-year-old benchmark has one named customer in the announcement, Invesco’s Aerospace & Defense ETF, and no disclosed price or terms.
2 stories
VettaFi buys SPADE Defense Index, the benchmark behind Invesco's $8 billion PPA
The deal follows VettaFi's August acquisition of RAFI Indices and lifts the assets tied to its aerospace and defense franchise past $11 billion.
VictoryShares' GFLW index screens 1,000 large caps down to 100 on cash flow
The Victory Free Cash Flow Growth Index picks its 100 names through five years of positive FCF growth, a forward-looking FCF ROIC screen, and a quarterly deletion of cash-negative constituents.
2 stories
Procure Space ETF fell 2.8% in September despite five double-digit gainers
Sky Perfect JSAT gained 181.7% in September and added 2.32 points to the fund's return, ETF Trends reports.
Thornburg's TMB bond ETF runs 1.4 years shorter duration than its index
The $260.98 million fund's 4.2-year effective duration compares with 5.6 for the Bloomberg U.S. Universal Index.
1 story
ALPS small-cap quality ETF fell 1.29% in Q3 as the Russell 2000 slid 6.43%
The $773.33 million fund puts more than 20% in industrials, which may have mattered as much as its quality screen in the smaller loss.
2 stories
VTI leads Vanguard's September ETF flows as VOO misses top-eight list
Eight Vanguard ETFs each drew more than $1 billion over four weeks, and four of them are fixed-income funds.
Micron earnings loom over iShares VLUE's 23.5% Micron position
ETF Trends ranks two 2x single-stock funds and iShares VLUE as the largest ETF exposures to Micron, which reports Wednesday.
3 stories
FTSE Russell launches AI-driven thematic index series with MarketPsych
MarketPsych's AI classifies companies into five theme pillars; FTSE Russell's rules then decide the portfolio's weighting, caps and turnover.
T. Rowe Price counts AI as nearly 60% of the Russell 1000 Growth Index
Timothy Murray's ChatGPT and FactSet review finds hyperscalers and AI infrastructure concentrated in large-cap growth, with the lightest exposure in U.S. small-caps and EAFE value.
AI infrastructure debt pushes tech past banks in major investment-grade bond indexes
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle issued more than $132 billion of bonds through the first half of 2026, lifting tech weight in pure corporate bond ETFs by about 300 basis points, according to ETF Trends.
2 stories
RAFI pitches fundamental indexing as a third option to cap weight and equal weight
RAFI Indices puts the weighted average market cap of its fundamental index at $769 billion, between the $1.39 trillion of a cap-weighted portfolio and the $127 billion of equal weight.
VettaFi's September rebalance cycle reshapes factor and thematic index ETFs
The index provider says the mid-September cycle moved Gilead Sciences and Structure Therapeutics into THNR, and OUSM's quality screen produced 111 names.
3 stories
Custom index mandates are won on delivery, not benchmark brand
SIX's index services chief argues that what clients buy behind a bespoke index is the pipeline that carries it, which makes the custom lane an operations contest rather than a naming contest.
CCNR sells a commodity story with equity beta
The $452.4 million active ETF has gained nearly 21% in 2026, but its diversification pitch rests on a correlation its nearly 80% materials-and-energy book does not own.
NTHM's rebalance sold SaaS and batteries for obesity drugs and pipelines
The rotation index does the selling for you, which is why its GLP-1 weight says nothing about obesity-drug economics and a lot about what was moving when the screen ran.
3 stories
The multi-factor comeback is a hedge against the index
Five billion dollars has flowed into multi-factor ETFs this year as insurance against the index itself, and RAFI's own weights show what the policy actually covers.
FLDB's 3.9% year is a curve trade, not a track record
The 20-basis-point fund's edge over the Agg comes mainly from where it sits on the curve, and its three-year shelf moment will be judged against whatever the front end is paying then.
QVML is a cheap S&P 500 tilt wearing an all-weather label
A multi-factor fund that moves with the index at 0.97 is a defensible fee trade. The all-weather label promises protection the correlation never supplied.
2 stories
The staples-discretionary spread is a holding-level story
State Street fund data shows a handful of names carrying this year's 13.61-point sector gap.
The muni ETF leaderboard is a fee ranking in disguise
Three active muni funds top ETF Trends' screen with three-year returns of 4.44% to 4.75%, and the nine-basis-point spread in their fees is doing the ranking.
6 stories
ELFY's new top holding is a rounding error with a crown
Twelve basis points separate first from second in a 112-name index, and the rebalance tells investors which side of the electrification trade the fund now wants to own.
HALX sells SpaceX to keep its AI hedge honest
A five-for-five rebalance trades a record-IPO holding for industrial ballast, giving up the name some shareholders bought the fund to own.
QGRO's reset sold Nvidia and made Lockheed Martin a 3.5% bet
American Century's quality screen dropped Nvidia and handed Lockheed Martin its largest sleeve increase, a move that says more about the rulebook than the market.
THNR's rebalance moved the trade to the trial money
Gilead and Structure Therapeutics enter a 20-stock index, while a $5.8 million fund's return still rides on Eli Lilly.
VFLO's 25-name growth cut is the real screen
The September 18 rebalance replaced five familiar names with mature technology, media and industrial franchises, making the growth filter the part of the index that does the real work.
OUSM's quality screen just made its biggest bet a sector call
A 111-name portfolio whose sector line binds harder than its single-name cap keeps producing sector outcomes under a quality label.
1 story
Breadth widened, and 67% of large-cap funds still lost
The mid-year SPIVA card prices the broadening-out thesis at twelve points of hit rate and no majority, which makes it an argument about wrapper pricing rather than stock picking.
1 story
SOXL’s 17% slide undercuts the single-stock precision pitch
Direxion’s targeted chip funds multiplied a semiconductor trade that moved as one story on September 14.
4 stories
The Japan defense ETF trade is mostly a Korea trade
Seoul has already made the 3.5 percent-of-GDP commitment; Tokyo has only indicated it could, and Japan is 14.58 percent of the WisdomTree Asia Defense Fund.
PRFZ at 20: the profitability filter is the edge
Invesco's fundamental-weight SMID fund has a decade of outperformance to point to, and a chosen comparison that quietly concedes both indices are mid-cap vehicles.
The floating-rate trio sells rate cover and charges for credit
Two index funds sit a basis point apart while the active option charges 45 more and yields 221 more; this week's Fed meeting is the wrong lens for the difference.
Sprott's uranium ETFs sell an AI story that spot hasn't confirmed
The nuclear pitch has migrated from tight supply to hyperscaler capital, and the funds now package each version of the demand case.