Reported by Bloomberg, BlackRock iShares – by far the largest issuer of ETFs in the world – is now seeking approval from the SEC for actively-managed ETFs “that would keep some of their assets undisclosed”. If such a modification to the Active ETF structure gets approved by the SEC, many issuers and managers would be much more comfortable in bringing strong active managers to the Active ETF space without fear for their strategies being front-run.
BlackRock iShares
The filing by iShares to launch both equity and fixed-income actively-managed ETFs could just be seen as yet another player tossing their hat in the ring. But there’s a few reasons why this step could be much more than that for the Active ETF space. With this filing, iShares has indeed announced its intentions and the writing on the wall is becoming clearer by the day.
On June 17th, two more players in the asset management space, BlackRock iShares (filing) and Huntington Asset Advisors (filing), filed to launch new actively-managed ETFs. June is turning out to be another month where there has been a deluge of players filing for plans to enter the Active ETF space. The first two weeks of June have already seen AdvisorShares filing for two new Active ETFs, as well as Drefyus and Horizons AlphaPro filing to launch more such products.
ALT invests in a combination of foreign currency forwards and exchange-traded futures on commodities, currencies, interest rates, equity and bond indices in order to achieve the maximum absolute return for the portfolio. The fund reduces risks by taking long/short positions in “historically correlated” assets. There are no mandatory allocation requirements between the various asset classes.
