As major market indices continued to buoy, exchange-traded-fund assets under management rosein March.
According to monthly data from State Street Global Advisors (STT) released last week, assets held in U.S. exchange-traded funds rose 7.2% from a month earlier to $806 billion. For the month, ETFs outpaced the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which rose 6% last month.
Ten of 12 ETF categories rose in March, according to State Street. The size and international categories accounted for 57% of the $54 billion gained overall in March.
As of March 31, there were 863 exchange-traded funds in the United States managed by 31 companies nationally.
The top three ETF managers collective accounted for 84% of the U.S. listed ETF assets, up 0.2 percentage points from a month earlier. BlackRock [BLK], which bought the iShares family of funds from Barclays, managed 47.8% of assets, State Street had 23.3% share, and Vanguard 12.9%.
Despite this overwhelming majority, other large companies are entering the ETF space. Last month, JPMorgan Chase & Co. [JPM] announced in a pair of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to introduce a pair of exchange-traded funds.
The New York company
The company is also interested in a pair of index-based ETFs. They want one that tracks an index of investment-grade U.S. municipal bonds with maturities between one and 12 years, and another that will track investment-grade U.S. corporate debt with an issuance of at least $300 million.