[This article appears in our October 2018 issue of ETF Report.]
Goldman Sachs crashed the ETF party late. Though the heavyweight asset manager and investment bank had dabbled in exchange-traded notes (ETNs) as early as 2007, it wasn't until 2015 that the firm launched its first bona fide ETF: the Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF (GSLC).
But what a debut it was.
GSLC was the ETF equivalent of a thrown gauntlet, a thumb in the eye of established players like State Street and BlackRock. The fund, a multifactor take on U.S. large-cap equities that cost just 0.09%, packaged Goldman Sachs' institutional-level strategy at a price tag retail investors could love. Within two months, GSLC had surpassed $100 million in assets. Within 12 months, it had surpassed $1 billion.
"Cost matters," said Michael Crinieri, global head of ETF Strategy for Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM). "[GSLC] was a cost-effective way to get exposure to more sophisticated strategies."
Since then, Goldman Sachs Asset Management's fledgling ETF wing has launched 11 additional smart-beta funds, all of which carry rock-bottom fees. Essentially, it's smart-beta investing at vanilla index prices—a combination that's won plenty of fans.
Flipping The Script With Factors
To date, GSAM has amassed combined assets under management of $9.3 billion in its 12 ETFs (Figure 1). (There are also three ETNs bearing the Goldman Sachs brand, but those are issued and managed by the firm's securities side, says Crinieri, not its ETF division.)
Figure 1: Goldman Sachs Active Management ETFs
| Fund | Expense Ratio | AUM ($M) | Launch Date |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF | 0.09% | 3,970 | 9/21/2015 |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta Emerging Markets Equity ETF | 0.45% | 1,710 | 9/29/2015 |
| Goldman Sachs Access Treasury 0-1 Year ETF | 0.12% | 1,610 | 9/6/2016 |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta International Equity ETF | 0.25% | 1,100 | 11/6/2015 |
| Goldman Sachs JUST U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF | 0.20% | 272 | 6/7/2018 |
| Goldman Sachs Access Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF | 0.14% | 259 | 6/6/2017 |
| Goldman Sachs Hedge Industry VIP ETF | 0.45% | 110 | 11/1/2016 |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta Europe Equity ETF | 0.25% | 75 | 3/2/2016 |
| Goldman Sachs Equal Weight U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF | 0.09% | 72 | 9/12/2017 |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta Japan Equity ETF | 0.25% | 53 | 3/2/2016 |
| Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta U.S. Small Cap Equity ETF | 0.20% | 47 | 6/28/2017 |
| Goldman Sachs Access High Yield Corporate Bond ETF | 0.34% | 46 | 9/5/2017 |
| Total AUM: | $9.324 |
Sources: ETF.com, FactSet; data as of Aug. 31, 2018
Almost all of GSAM's ETFs take some market segment or sector commonly covered by a vanilla, core product and add a smart-beta or factor twist.
The six ActiveBeta equity ETFs, for example, rank and index potential constituents according to four factors, then combine the results into one blended, multifactor index. The Access fixed-income products, meanwhile, use liquidity constraints and fundamental factors to excise underperforming issuers from broad baskets of bonds.
Even the nonsmart-beta ETFs, like the Goldman Sachs JUST U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF (JUST), flip the script on what ETFs of a certain type ought to look like. In JUST's case, it's a socially responsible fund whose holdings—and even social objectives—evolve as investors' priorities do (read: "'JUST' Takes In $250 Million Its First Day").
Though GSAM's ETF business remains small, its asset-gathering ability has proven mighty: Seven of the firm's 12 funds have already crossed $100 million in assets, a commonly used yardstick to measure an ETF's profitability. Four have topped $1 billion.
Smart Beta On The Cheap
Although Goldman Sachs uses factors specifically to harness their excess return, most GSAM ETFs aren't performance superstars. Most of the firm's funds hug their respective segment benchmarks fairly closely, and although on a one-year basis all Goldman ETFs outperform the top competing fund in the space, most do so by a percentage point or less (Figure 2):
Figure 2: Goldman Sachs Asset Management ETFs vs. Top Competing ETFs
Sources: ETF.com; FactSet; data as of Aug. 31, 2018
Goldman's ETFs are, however, cheap. GSLC, for example, sports an expense ratio of just 0.09% —equal to that of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and a whopping 41 basis points cheaper than the average large-cap equity ETF. The Goldman Sachs Access Treasury 0-1 Year ETF (GBIL), meanwhile, costs just 0.12%, or 3 basis points cheaper than the iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF (SHV) and 36 basis points less than the average Treasury ETF.
In fact, GSAM's modus operandi seems to be to target a segment's most popular vanilla ETF, then offer its own multifactor product at a substantial discount. In the few cases where GSAM ETFs are more expensive than the competition, it's usually because a cheaper rival has usurped the crown from the segment's former leader.
