Vanguard’s $25.7B 1Q ETF Inflows Trounce BlackRock’s
The smaller firm is the quarter’s top asset gatherer thanks to equity funds’ big take.
Vanguard Group, the second largest exchange-traded fund issuer, brought a net $25.7 billion into its ETFs in the first quarter, topping larger rival BlackRock Inc.’s year-to-date total.
Vanguard’s haul was fueled by $19.1 billion of flows into its equity products, according to data the firm supplied. Fixed income ETFs pulled in $6.6 billion during the quarter. Among the firm’s top asset-gathering ETFs was the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which lured in $4.5 billion in the first quarter of the year, according to etf.com data.
BlackRock’s iShares unit posted a $500 million net loss during the same period, according to the firm. Still, iShares remains the largest ETF issuer, with $2.3 trillion in assets across its 384 U.S.-listed products, compared with the $2 trillion Vanguard holds in 82 of its U.S.-domiciled funds, etf.com data shows.
Whipsawing markets, bank runs and back-to-back-to-back Federal Reserve interest rate hikes have resulted in investors rebalancing portfolios and shying away from risk. U.S. fixed income funds lured in nearly $44 billion in the first quarter of the year, according to etf.com data, nearly triple the $15 billion the asset class pulled in during the same period last year.
Meanwhile, U.S. equity funds bled $2.9 billion in the first three months of the year, a reversal from the $99 billion haul they posted in the year-ago quarter.
At BlackRock, bond ETFs took the spotlight, as $26.4 billion went into fixed income funds, according to data provided by the firm. Still, gains were mostly erased as other asset classes, including the issuer’s equity products, shed assets. Included in the issuer’s top asset gathering ETFs were the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) and the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), which collectively pulled $10.6 billion, etf.com data shows.
That tracks with the flows for this year, which have been anemic compared with the same period in 2022. In the first quarter of that year, U.S.-listed ETFs brought in $91.1 billion. This year, that number fell by 18% to $76.9 billion.
Last year, Malvern, Pennsylvania-based Vanguard pulled $192 billion into its ETFs, according to ETF.com data, despite the worst equity environment since 2008 and the harshest bond market in decades. Its total topped the $171 billion that New York-based BlackRock’s iShares’ unit took in, according to etf.com data.
Contact Shubham Saharan at [email protected]
