## [# Not Dead Yet: ETF Innovation is Thriving](/sections/etf-analytics/not-dead-yet-etf-innovation-thriving)
# Not Dead Yet: ETF Innovation is Thriving
It's been a little over a quarter since I came back to ETF.com, and to say that "a lot's happened" since September 2025 is a pretty dramatic understatement. Putting (waves hands) aside, we've reconfigured a lot of what we're doing around here ... while the ETF industry has made a lot waves itself.
[](/contributors/dave-nadig)
[By Dave Nadig ](/contributors/dave-nadig)
Jan 16, 2026
Edited by: ETF.com Staff
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Here's a teaser of what's coming at ETF.com in the next little while.
- We're hosting a cool beach club in March down at Future Proof Citywide in Miami. We'll have our own stage, our own content agenda (coming soon), and will be filming conversations with the movers and shakers of the ETF industry.
- We've got some incredible partnerships to announce – soon! Expect unique, useful, actionable insights you won't find other places. Big promise? I don't think you'll be disappointed.
- We've gone out into the field to talk with investors, advisors and asset managers anywhere we can find them. Check out our [**YouTube channel**](https://www.youtube.com/@etf_com): it's jam packed with great interviews from Schwab IMPACT, Astoria's Macro conference, and more.
But honestly the coolest (also hardest) project we've undertaken is rethinking and launching the ETF.com awards for the bananas year that was the 2025 launch cycle.
## 2025: A Big Year
- **$1.43T in flows** - record
- **1,123 new launches** - record (85%+ were active)
- **$13.4T total AUM** across 4,850 ETFs
I'll be honest, I see that "1.43T" and I'm still not sure I believe it. The first time I was Director of Research for ETF.com – way back in 2008 – we were shocked that flows that year stayed over $150 billion (on a paltry asset base of about $600b). For perspective, that's about three weeks of flows these days. Back then, there were no actively managed ETFs: depending on what you want to count, the first came from either Bear Stearns or PowerShares in 2008. Today, there are more active ETFs than passive (2,226 vs 2,157).
Every year since 2008, various media pundits have declared that there were too many ETFs, or that there was no room left, or that there was nothing innovative left to tackle. The era of cheap beta was established, and nothing would ever move the needle again.
Horsefeathers.
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## Awards? Awards!
Clearly, innovation is not only alive and well, but pushing boundaries, definitions (and buttons) all over the place. Which made an "awards process" particularly challenging. Consider how we ran this process a decade ago:
- We put out a general call for nominations. We've done this with forms, with survey monkey, and with an inbound email box. The result was nearly always the same. A handful of firms who paid close attention and had a decent social media presence got the message out, flooding us with single nominations. "I don't care about anything else, I just want XYZ nominated because I like them and they asked me to."
- The resulting nominations were, generally, a pure popularity contest. Funds we loved and thought solved real problems were ignored. Funds with brand name recognition made every cut.
- The ETF.com editorial team sorts through the nominations and winnows them down to the top 5.
- A committee (generally, all the independent ETF pundits we could rally) makes final votes, and winners are announced at a big celebratory dinner, that typically ran long and was chock full of speeches (I gave my fair share too).
Honestly, I found this process deeply unsatisfying as an ETF guy. It's not so much that seeing "Best Equity ETF: [SPY](https://www.etf.com/SPY)" over and over again didn't make sense; it just didn't feel like it was capturing the actual dynamism going on in this corner of finance. So we inverted. This year:
- We focused only on NEW ETFs. While that would have been silly in 2008 when a few dozen funds were launching, in 2025 with over 1000 new products to consider, it seemed like the only obvious path was to help investors separate the wheat from the chaff in those 1,000 new tickers.
- We (meaning, ETF.com editorial), took the first pass at nominations. In a multi-week process, we looked at every single fund (or series) that launched, and genuinely tried to assess how we thought it ranked in four categories:
- **Merit:** Does this ETF represent genuine innovation, and does being an ETF add clear value?
- **Market Position:** Is this fund a first-mover or clearly best-in-class within its category?
- **Utility:** How easy is the ETF for retail investors to understand and use appropriately? How easily can an advisor explain the ETF's portfolio purpose to clients?
- **Staying Power:** Will this fund still matter in three or more years?
These are obviously hugely subjective, although they're informed by data. You'll find giant category dominating funds, but you'll also find niche products we feel are genuinely doing something worth paying attention to. You can see [the full list here](https://www.etf.com/etf-awards-2026). But in the end we culled the universe of over 1,000 funds down to 52 unique ETFs from a staggering 41 issuers.
In that list you'll find funds that solve thorny tax issues, mold return patterns into unique shapes, break new regulatory ground, open up whole new asset classes, bring institutional structured products to anyone with a Robinhood account, and bridge to the DeFi future.
## What Jumped Out ... to ME.
Recognizing that as with anyone's perceptions, mine are uniquely flawed and personal and based on my own reality tunnel, history and mental state, my biggest takeaways from the entire process have been:
**Regulatory Shenanigans**
Regulatory innovation is NOT dead. Essentially every category has some level of real innovation going on. Whether it's building [new bridges in Crypto](< https://www.etf.com/BSOL>), or bringing actual [Money Market funds](https://www.etf.com/SBIL) into ETFs, or sliding [private credit](https://www.etf.com/PRIV) into a '40 Act structure, creating [income-less bond portfolios](https://www.nadig.com/p/actual-etf-innovation-fms-compoundr), the innovation there is real.
... but...
I may not personally think all innovation is "good." From stealth-mid-shutdown launches to launching without market makers to [ignoring SEC concerns](https://www.nadig.com/p/etf-product-proliferation), the industry is pushing the regulatory envelope like it's made out of tissue paper. Which it is. I'll never stop speaking my mind about what I think is good for investors, but I'm just one person who's particularly keyed up on trust issues for long-term investors.
**"Active"**
Active is ruling the roost. 80% of funds launched last year were actively managed. The funds in the [Active](https://www.etf.com/sections/best-etfs/2026-etfcom-award-nominees-active-etf) award race range from name-above-the-ticker storied active managers to long-short hedge fund strategies and [autocallable ladders](https://www.etf.com/CAIE).
... but...
There's active and there's active. Whole swaths of the ETF industry (most single stock levered or options ETFs, most buffered products) are technically active, because things like strike selection and roll timing are extremely difficult to "indexize." Even knowing the name of the fund manager isn't a clue. Dan Ives eponymous ETF ([IVES](https://www.etf.com/IVES)), actually tracks a Wedbush Solactive index, while Tom Lee's 2025 FundStrat launch ([GRNJ](https://www.etf.com/GRNJ)) is managers-choice, despite both gentlemen regularly appearing on video to talk their individual portfolio picks.
**The Niches are No Longer Niches**
Three categories capture most of the "weird stuff": [Options Income](https://www.etf.com/sections/best-etfs/2026-etfcom-award-nominees-options-income), [Multi-Asset](https://www.etf.com/sections/equity/2026-etfcom-award-nominees-multi-asset) and [Alternatives](https://www.etf.com/sections/best-etfs/2026-etfcom-award-nominees-alternatives). 1 in 5 ETFs launched in 2025 was in one of those categories, and most of the big ones solved real problems. In many cases, these are products putting retail names on institutional standbys, from Portable Alpha returning as "[Return Stacking](https://www.etf.com/RSSX)" or structured products showing up as "Indexed Autocallables," these three categories are littered with genuinely cool and useful tools.
... but...
It's never been easier to launch an ETF, so everyone can launch an ETF. An astounding 83 new issuers entered the ETF Terrordome (h/t [Eric Balchunas](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2019-03-22/etf-fee-wars-are-no-laughing-matter)) in 2025, including plenty of household names like [Baron Capital](https://www.etf.com/channels/baron-capital-etfs) or [AllianceBernstein](https://www.etf.com/channels/alliancebernstein-etfs). 8 nominees this year have never had an ETF in the market before 2025 – that's staggering to me. For all the regular whinging about how there's no green field space anymore, at least those 8 firms found room, and not necessarily just the old guard: investment (community? newsletter? service?) firm [Hedgeye](https://www.etf.com/channels/hedgeye-etfs) has not one but TWO ETFs nominated in their first year out.
## **And in 2026?**
Looking at what launched – and landed with investors in 2025, there are a few areas I'm watching like a hawk in 2026, not just for fun, but in the hunt for next years nominees.
- Gold, silver and strategic/rare earth metals are in the headlines in response to global chaos. I'm very much not a "sell America" guy, but bitcoin and the precious metals have proven to be the financial market barometer for how far over the edge we are. Expect even more "safety" plays that, in some way, sneak in a bet against either the S&P 500 or the Dollar.
- Someone will win, and we'll all call them geniuses. Anytime there's a chaos market (and it's hard to imagine 2025 being anything else but a chaos market), some active manager is going to get it right. It's impossible to know in advance whether it will be one of the folks in the arena right now, or some up-and-coming contrarian, but someone's gonna get lucky, and there will be big headlines. Ignore them. You can't know who the lucky one will be in advance.
- The distinction between active and passive will continue to erode. While I don't think anything (literally, anything) will happen either in DC or on Wall Street to mitigate the (to me) irrefutable evidence that passive flows distort price discovery, I do think we're going to see more and more funds where you have to look very closely to even know whether your fund is "passive" or not.
- Trust matters, and will matter even more. I'm not making a called shot for a flash-crash, but there is a bell curve distribution in everything. Some hospital in the U.S. currently employs the **very worst** practicing brain surgeon. Some ETF back office out there is the very very best in operation. And one is the very, very worst. We'll find out who's who when something outside the ETF ecosystem forces it respond quickly and with accuracy.
At the end of the day, Trust is the whole ball game. As barriers to initial success fall – from deregulation to product proliferation and the decline of independent media – brand matters **more**. Not brand in the "I've heard of them" sense. Brand in the "I know who they are, what they stand for, and they've proven it" sense. In a world of 5,000 ETFs, provenance will matter. It will be one of the only filters most investors can manage.
You – the investor, the advisor, the one checking out the ETF market – you are ultimately the only opinion that matters. You vote with your dollars.
I hope [**you'll vote with a click or two** ](https://www.etf.com/etf-awards-2026-voting)too.
*Stay connected to the heart of the ETF community and find your next insights waiting at* [***ETF.com***](https://www.etf.com)*.*
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[ Dave Nadig President & Director of Research ](/contributors/dave-nadig)
Prior to becoming chief investment officer and director of research at ETF Trends, Dave Nadig was managing director of etf.com. Previously, he was… [View Bio](/contributors/dave-nadig)
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