Exchange-traded funds built on their record year last month as they raked in a fresh $66 billion of new investor money. With two thirds of 2021 in the books, ETFs’ year-to-date haul clocked in at over $591 billion.Global stock markets continued to advance despite uncertainty around the coronavirus delta variant. The Morningstar Global Markets Index--a broad gauge of global equities--added 2.5% in August, boosting its year-to-date return to 15.64%. That marked its seventh consecutive month in the black, its longest such streak since it notched 15 straight positive months from November 2016–January 2018. Bonds took a small step back, however, snapping a four-month winning streak of their own. After sliding 0.15% in August, the Morningstar US Core Bond Index has now lost 0.72% for the year to date.Here, we’ll take a closer look a… Full Story

At first blush, investors might think that an actively managed exchange-traded fund is an oxymoron. They can be forgiven for this mistake. After all, for their first 15 years of existence, ETFs were the exclusive domain of indexers. Even today, active ETFs account for just 3.5% of the $6.6 trillion that investors have allocated to ETFs.Active ETFs are not a contradiction, but an innovation. ETFs are just a vessel, a wrapper in which asset managers package and distribute investment strategies to investors--active, passive, and everything in between. The ETF wrapper can deliver material benefits for investors partnering with active managers. But, as with everything, there are trade-offs. Not every strategy is a good fit for an ETF. Also, depending on the strategy, ETFs' benefits might not always materialize.The BenefitsThe bi… Full Story