Passive & Indexing: archive
Every Passive & Indexing story in ETFs, newest first. 84 stories
2 stories
The 5% ten-year is a duration call an income overlay cannot make
NEOS is selling a 3.53% yield as comfort to nervous bond investors in the week the ten-year first touched 5% since 2023 — a payout that arrives without touching the duration exposure.
WTV is beating an index built on the value definition it dropped
A 20-year-old value fund's shareholder-yield screen is outrunning the value benchmark by 400 basis points, a gap that measures drift in the value label as much as the fund itself.
2 stories
The equal-weight cap made SDOG's 19.36% run
A $1.41 billion dividend fund is beating a market it deliberately underweights in its best-performing sector, and its 3.32% yield is the reason income investors are paying attention.
The value label hides a 1,100-basis-point rules decision
Advisors screening value funds on category names or sector weights are looking past the only variable that separated a 21% year from an 11% one; holdings overlap missed it too.
1 story
ALPS's REIT ETF case is a sub-segment tilt, not stock skill
Healthcare REITs are 21.65% of the ALPS book and most of the argument, which makes occupancy and leverage numbers, not manager judgment, the things to track from here.
2 stories
The muni renaissance runs through the top bracket
Taxable-equivalent yields have pulled high earners back into tax-exempt credit, but the $105 billion flow figure cannot say whether cheap beta is capturing any of it.
OEFA's dividend case leans on buybacks
Two showcase holdings, two buyback programs, and an index fee that funds the marketing say more than the dividend label does.
3 stories
Energy ETFs split by how they touch the barrel
With oil back above $100, the energy aisle separates into four distinct trades.
The EM diversification pitch is now a three-chip bet
Broad emerging-markets benchmarks now hold more than 45 percent of their country weight in Taiwan and South Korea, and a quarter of their assets in three semiconductor names.
XSVM's small-cap lead runs on momentum
Momentum decides which stocks get in; value decides how much weight they get. That's why XSVM is 200 basis points ahead of both benchmarks.
2 stories
Index Funds Are No Longer the Neutral Default
Top-heavy equities and Treasury-heavy bonds have quietly remade what core passive funds deliver.
Faith-based ETFs are outgrowing negative screening
The 48-fund U.S. shelf is broadening past equity screens; the harder work, the global numbers suggest, is building indexes that choose as well as exclude.
1 story
FLDR puts the index in the manager's chair
FLDR pairs a one-year duration cap with statistical sampling at 15 basis points, five basis points cheaper than Fidelity's active fund, and leaves the credit calls to an optimizer.
2 stories
IBUY's back-to-school trade reaches the checkout
The NRF's $146.8 billion forecast is a seasonal headline; Wayfair, Etsy, and Affirm give IBUY a claim on the financing layer as well as the goods.
XLE tops sector SPDRs as oil risk returns
XLE was August's best sector fund, but the gain ran through oilfield services and refiners, not its integrated-major core.
6 stories
Japan's yield spike puts short-duration active ETFs in focus
A 3% 10-year JGB yield — a level not seen since 1996 — makes Goldman's 16-basis-point ultra-short fund the test case for active short-duration wrappers.
Tweedy Browne prices insider buying into a foreign-value ETF
The fund's 20.39% year-to-date gain, the firm argues, comes from copied insider buys and buybacks, not just cheap foreign stocks.
OGIG's 10.7% August rides a cloud-AI earnings wave
The tech-heavy book supplied 9.27 of the 10.7 points, leaving 1.43 for everything else.
MFEM's 26% YTD makes the case for dynamic factor EM
A $160 million emerging-markets ETF is beating cap-weighting with fundamental weights and dynamic factor tilts; now it has to win shelf space.
GFLW rebalance adds Caterpillar, Dell and Royalty Pharma
The free-cash-flow ETF's June reconstitution shows what the screen buys, what it cuts, and why the rules do the managing.
CWEB: a daily trade on China's AI capex cycle
The 2x daily objective sits over a concentrated index of Chinese platforms paying for AI infrastructure — a powerful trade for days, a poor position for years.
2 stories
VFINX at 50: the index fund that changed everything
An $11.3 million experiment in 1976 became the default way trillions are now invested.
Sector Equal Weight Is the Smarter Concentration Play
A sector-level equal-weight fund like EQL lets advisors trim the S&P 500's concentration without the tax bill of a full reconstruction.
1 story
Critical materials ETFs are the AI-power trade in a wrapper
Sprott's SETM sells diversification, but the demand story is the energy grid.
1 story
RSP's $100B crossing makes equal weight a core allocation
The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF hit $100 billion, a flows story about concentration risk more than performance.
2 stories
The Treasury twist gives duration ETFs a tailwind
A supply-timing move, not a deficit fix, steers the long-end trade toward the wrapper.
Robot Demand's Next Wave Is Everywhere but Autos
Non-auto sectors now drive robot adoption, and thematic ETFs are the hook for an automation cycle that may only be starting.
2 stories
European equity ETFs catch the rotation's tailwind
Flows into VGK, IEUR, BBEU and OPPE are repricing European funds for their industrial, financial and infrastructure overweights.
COPY's insider-buying filter is a value edge
The Tweedy, Browne active ETF screens for insider purchases and buybacks; its 20.30% YTD gain is a strong start, but the screen is unproven over a full cycle.
1 story
Job openings are the robotics trade's leading indicator
A 94% correlation between factory job openings and robot installations a year later makes U.S. automation demand forecastable and sets physical-AI exposure apart from the slower humanoid story.
3 stories
The case for international value ETFs is missing its numbers
A content-hub article pitches insider-led international value, with ICPY up 12.87%. It never proves the neglect.
Defense Department lends $400 million to Sunrise Energy Metals
The conditional loan puts federal money behind an REXC holding as Washington's $3 billion critical-minerals push takes shape.
RAFI's $200 billion anti-cap-weight business lands at TMX
Rob Arnott's fundamental indexing now sits behind TMX VettaFi's push for $1 trillion in index assets.
7 stories
Sprott argues uranium supplies are about to tighten
A new contracting cycle in Europe and the US could tighten uranium supplies just as demand accelerates, supporting prices and the case for URNM.
Three small-cap ETFs surface as Russell 2000 sets record
A biotech index, a cash-flow screen and a value tilt offer different ways to ride the small-cap benchmark's new high.
A rate-hedged junk ETF makes the quality case
WisdomTree's HYZD runs a 0.22-year duration hedge over a BB-heavy book. Its sponsor says plain high-yield beta no longer cuts it.
Broadcom's bear market turns single-stock ETFs into a timing problem
The AI chip maker is 20.6% below its 52-week high; Direxion's inverse fund and its 2x bull fund are wagers on which catalyst runs out first.
GFLW halves Sterling stake as free-cash-flow rules bite
Sterling Infrastructure had gained 114% in three months. GFLW's June rebalance cut the stake nearly in half and pushed the fund's beta to 1.02.
Gold-mining ETFs outrun the metal as Sprott and Global X lead with 25% gains
Spot gold is back near $4,400. Operating leverage and historically low valuations are spreading the rally from bullion to the companies that dig it up.
A $1.3 trillion utility splurge puts an electrification ETF ahead of sector funds
ELFY is up 22% year to date. Industrial and energy holdings, not the utility stake, are driving the gain, which is about six times a typical utilities benchmark's return.