ETF Closures Outpace Prior Year; Launches Lag

This year in ETFs has been pretty busy so far, and it looks like we may be seeing a new peak level of closures by the time things shake out at the end of the year.

In terms of closures, there have been 63 through the end of July, with the largest batch coming from State Street Global Advisors, which shut down 19 funds on July 24. Interestingly, State Street has only launched one fund so far this year.

There were only 40 closures by this time last year, with the total for 2016 nevertheless reaching a record of 128 products shut down. August and September both saw large numbers of closures (41 and 23, respectively), so the rest of the third quarter could be interesting, to say the least. After all, we’ve already got a handful of closures pending still for August, including 13 from ProShares.

Launches

Through the end of July, there were 131 ETF launches; that compares with 140 launches during the same year-to-date period last year, which was one of the top years for launches. Four firms have rolled out nine ETFs each: Invesco PowerShares, BlackRock’s iShares, First Trust and Direxion.

PowerShares’ launches include the PowerShares Treasury Collateral Portfolio (CLTL), which currently has $452.4 million in assets under management, more than any of the other ETFs that have launched this year. However, it should be noted that most of those assets are held by PowerShares or its parent company.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]