Welcome to ETF IQ, a weekly newsletter dedicated to the $14 trillion global ETF industry. I'm Bloomberg News reporter and anchor Katie Greifeld.

Shooting for the Moon

What’s cooler than $200 billion? $1 trillion, says JPMorgan Asset Management. 

Travis Spence, JPMAM’s global head of ETFs, thinks the firm can hit that milestone for ETF assets over the next five years. It’s ambitious, but not out of the question for an issuer that has grown aggressively over the past several years. 

For frequent readers of this newsletter, JEPI is almost a household name. The ETF’s portfolio of low-volatility stocks paired with an options overlay strategy to generate steady payment streams launched in May 2020, inspiring a wave of copycats and kickstarting JPMorgan’s ambitions to rule the active ETF category. By several measures, it does. While Dimensional Fund Advisors commands more actively managed ETF assets than JPMorgan, JEPI ranks as the biggest actively managed equity ETF with $38 billion in assets, while the firm’s JPST is largest active bond ETF.

With that in mind, Spence says that continuing to focus and beef up the firm’s active fund lineup is the ticket to turn its $200 billion in overall ETF assets to $1 trillion over the next five years, as the entire pie grows:

Over the next five years we think the overall industry, $15 trillion goes to $30 trillion. I think active grows from call it $1.2 trillion today globally to $6 trillion. So within that, we’re going to continue to play in that active space that’s growing at double the rate of the overall ETF industry, and we see investor preferences continue to go into that. If we can continue to do our job and continue to deliver great results, we think we can probably be managing from $200 billion up to $1 trillion in the next five years. 

We’ll meet back here in 2030 to check in. 

You’ll Thank Me Later

Vanguard Group celebrated a big birthday this week: the late Jack Bogle founded the firm 50 years ago on May 1, 1975. Fast forward to 2025, Vanguard has revolutionized the investing landscape with its low fees and index-tracking funds. 

Current Chief Executive Officer Salim Ramji — the first person to be hired to helm the firm externally — has an interesting job. On one hand, he has to try and futureproof the 50-year old investing giant, to make sure that Vanguard doesn’t get left behind in the next revolution. But he has to do that in such a way that he doesn’t alienate the loyal core following of Bogleheads.

Vanguard signage outside the company's campus in Paoli, Pennsylvania, US. Photographer: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg

That occasionally means saying no. Pre-Ramji’s tenure, Vanguard sat out the crypto ETF race — not only did the company say in no uncertain terms that it wouldn’t launch such a product, but it made the pointed decision to refuse to offer the new ETFs on its trading platform. While the move briefly sparked #BoycottVanguard to trend on social media, the firm held firm. 

Under Ramji, Vanguard has created a new advice and wealth platform. So how would he handle such a run-in as Vanguard’s advisory business grows? Here’s what he told me on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week:

We’re not going to be everything to everybody, and that’s okay with us... We’re always going to be focused on what we think is a good way to build long-term wealth that is suited to the client’s individual needs. And so that may mean saying no, or saying we don’t think that particular product or that particular offering is right for the client. We may not get caught up in the latest fad, but we’re dependable in the long-term.

Find the interview on Bloomberg TV at 6pm New York time.

Bryon Lake, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s recently hired chief transformation officer, is now joining the firm’s third-party wealth business. 

The world’s biggest exchange-traded fund just got its biggest endorsement yet. The $608 billion Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (ticker  VOO) saw a nearly $21 billion inflow last month, the most in its 15-year history and the fifth largest amount ever taken in by a fund on a monthly basis

In April’s tariff-driven market turbulence, investors yanked roughly $60 billion from fixed-income mutual funds, while bond ETFs overall weathered the storm.

In this week’s Drill Down on Bloomberg Television’s ETF IQ, Matt Collins of PGIM stopped by to talk about the PGIM AAA CLO ETF (ticker PAAA). The fund invests in top-rated collateralized loan obligations, and with more than $3 billion in assets, it ranks as the second-largest CLO-tracking ETF. The floating-rate nature of securities means that PAAA has gained about 13.3% on a total return basis since its July 2023 launch, handily outperformed the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG).

But while PGIM has done well with its PAAA, Collins said that the firm has no interest in venturing down the risk spectrum and launching an ETF focused solely on lower-rated BBB debt:

We’ve thought about it — because there’s a lot of demand going into the triple B ETF segment and I’ve seen a few launch and they immediately gather assets as well — we’re going to stay out of that. The yield is really attractive — think about triple As at 150 basis points plus over benchmark rates, you get another 150 basis points for triple B. But the drawdown can be north of 10%. The risk-reward does not make sense for the common investor so we don’t think it belongs as a building block, but we do take advantage of dislocations as an asset manager... We’ll use it, just not as an ETF.

ETF IQ is taking a one-week break for special coverage of the Milken Institute Global Conference. We’ll be back on May 12th at 12pm Eastern.