September 2024 was a blockbuster month for the U.S. ETF industry, with 126 new listings, according to CFRA’s FUNDynamix ETF database.
Fixed-income ETFs accounted for 62 of these listings and are often launched simultaneously by issuers as a family of products. One example of this was State Street’s launch of 14 target maturity corporate and municipal bond ETFs, which hold bonds that mature in specific calendar years. The target maturity bond ETF space is large, with $54 billion in assets as of September 30, 2024.
The space is dominated by two issuers: Invesco (with its Bulletshares brand, which it acquired when it bought Guggenheim’s ETF business in 2017) and Blackrock (with its iBonds brand). The category of target maturity bond ETFs took in almost $13 billion in net flows through the first three quarters of 2024. State Street will compete for a slice of that growing pie by differentiating its products as actively managed.
Another issuer that launched a ‘family’ of fixed-income ETFs was Stone Ridge, a new entrant to the ETF industry. It launched a series of 28 ETFs that hold government securities and are designed to pay monthly distributions until a specific date.
ETFs that use derivatives or adopt quant strategies are also growing in number. There were 14 leveraged/inverse ETFs launched in the month by AXS, GraniteShares and REX Shares. Ten defined outcome (buffer) ETFs were also launched in the month.
The complete list of September ETF launches in the U.S. is provided below:
