Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds increased last month, but couldn’t quite keep pace with the Standard & Poor’s 500.
According to a monthly survey by State Street Global Advisors, ETF assets rose 2.9% in February to $752 billion, but the S&P 500 increased 3.1% during the month.
State Street said in a report released Tuesday that all 13 ETF categories increased in February, but sector ETFs surged 4.95% to $72.9 billion.
As of Feb. 28, 856 ETFs were managed nationally by 31 asset management companies. The top three managers collective accounted for 83.8% of the U.S. listed ETF assets under management. As of Feb. 28, BlackRock [BLK], which bought the iShares family of funds from Barclays, managed 48.1% of assets, State Street [STT] had 23% share, and Vanguard 12.7%.
Despite this overwhelming majority, the share of total ETF assets held by these three managers declined 0.5% in February as smaller providers continued to gather assets.
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While ETFs held outside of tax-advantaged retirement plans offer just that feature, as well as intraday trading, the appeal of ETFs for 401(k) investors is their low fees, Wojnar said.