Snapshot of the ETF Industry

Just for fun, we thought we would put all the key facts related to the ETF industry in one spot.... So here goes. Our database contains 3,263 exchange traded products:

Category	Count
	582
Alternatives	226
Asset Allocation	78
Commodities	121
Global Equity	721
Global Fixed Income	27
Special Security Types	57
US Equity	1014
US Fixed Income	437
Total	3,263

This includes both exchange traded funds (ETFs) and exchange traded notes (ETNs):

ETP Type	Count
	2
ETF	3,166
ETN	95
Total	3,263

Throughout this website, we tend to loosely use the term "ETF" to refer to both ETFs and ETNs. Some people use the term "ETP" for exchange traded products, but we tend to use the term "ETF". Read more about what an ETN is.

As shown in this table, most ETFs today track an index:

Investment Style	ETF Count
	591
Actively managed	590
Buys and sells commodity futures on a set pattern	12
Follows a set investment pattern	4
Other	131
Passively tracks an index	1,911
Physically owns a precious metal	14
Tracks price of currency exchange rates	10
Total	3,263

The ETF industry continues to grow. Let's look at the launch date of the ETFs currently in our database:

Year of Inception	Count
1980	1
1993	1
1995	1
1996	17
1998	10
1999	1
2000	46
2001	22
2002	6
2003	10
2004	23
2005	42
2006	111
2007	159
2008	73
2009	81
2010	101
2011	91
2012	84
2013	97
2014	101
2015	139
2016	130
2017	177
2018	199
2019	223
2020	300
2021	488
2022	449
2023	80
Total	3,263

Note that there were actually even more ETFs launched then this table shows, as we are only displaying the launch dates of ETFs still active in our database. There were hundreds of more ETFs that were launched during these years that have since been closed down by their sponsor.

The Industry Is Dominated By Large ETFs

The top 100 largest ETFs account for 75% of all ETF trading volume. And there are lots of small ETFs with low trading volumes:

	ETFs	ETNs	Total
Total	3,166	95	3,261
Trading volume below 10,000 shares a day	1,160	58	1,218
Percentage	36.64%	61.05%	37.35%

Passive versus Active Management

Most ETFs are "passively managed" - i.e. they follow an index developed by one of the 40+ index providers. An actively managed ETF is an ETF that does not follow an index. Instead, the fund's portfolio manager judgmentally decides what assets to buy and sell. Our database contains 590 actively managed ETFs:

Category	Count
Alternatives	49
Asset Allocation	49
Commodities	21
Global Equity	84
Global Fixed Income	7
Special Security Types	13
US Equity	203
US Fixed Income	164
Total	590

Most actively managed ETFs are fairly new:

Year of Inception	Count
1980	1
2000	1
2007	1
2008	3
2009	3
2010	4
2011	3
2012	9
2013	13
2014	26
2015	12
2016	26
2017	49
2018	55
2019	52
2020	107
2021	196
2022	29
Total	590

Actively managed ETFs tend to have higher fees. Average fees per our database:

Actively managed	Category	ETF Count	Average Expense Ratio
No		9	0.00%
No	Alternatives	161	0.32%
Yes	Alternatives	49	0.88%
No	Asset Allocation	29	0.62%
Yes	Asset Allocation	49	0.75%
No	Commodities	100	0.72%
Yes	Commodities	21	0.60%
No	Global Equity	637	0.54%
Yes	Global Equity	84	0.63%
No	Global Fixed Income	20	0.35%
Yes	Global Fixed Income	7	0.50%
No	Special Security Types	44	1.18%
Yes	Special Security Types	13	1.47%
No	US Equity	811	0.43%
Yes	US Equity	203	0.59%
No	US Fixed Income	273	0.25%
Yes	US Fixed Income	164	0.45%

Leveraged ETFs Are Very Popular

One reason for the growth of the ETF industry is that ETFs make it easy to invest using leverage. As of today, there are 122 leveraged ETFs. To give you some feel for how popular they are, the total average daily trading volume of these leveraged ETFs is 580,675,775 shares.

Leveraged ETFs apply different amounts of leverage:

Leverage factor	Number of ETFs
1.23	1
1.25	1
1.50	4
2.00	75
3.00	41
Total	122

Inverse or Short ETFs Are Also Popular

Another reason for the growth of the ETF industry is that ETFs make it easy to "go short" by buying an inverse ETF. As of today, there are 89 leveraged ETFs. To give you some feel for how popular they are, the total average daily trading volume of these inverse ETFs is 422,462,193 shares.

Inverse ETFs apply different amounts of leverage:

Leverage factor	Number of ETFs
-3.00	25
-2.00	40
-1.00	24
Total	89

Smart beta has become trendy

There are 618 smart beta ETFs in our database, out of the 1,431 equity ETFs that track indexes, or 43%. Here is a breakout of how many factors the smart beta ETFs are using:

Factors Used	Number of ETFs	%
0	813	56.81%
1	298	20.82%
2	122	8.53%
3	108	7.55%
4	79	5.52%
5	9	0.63%
6	1	0.07%
7	1	0.07%
Total	1,431

The industry continues to launch smart beta ETFs:

Year of Inception	Count
2000	16
2001	3
2003	3
2004	5
2005	26
2006	43
2007	36
2008	5
2009	6
2010	23
2011	24
2012	28
2013	33
2014	32
2015	64
2016	70
2017	56
2018	34
2019	34
2020	32
2021	40
2022	5
Total	618

Despite the number of newly launched smart beta ETFs, smart beta ETFs have not yet captured a huge market share. ETFs that track passive indexes continue to dominate trading volumes:

Number of factors	Average Volume	Percentage
0	1,761,132,502	93.69%
1	59,241,787	3.15%
2	21,920,706	1.17%
3	25,570,103	1.36%
4	11,363,886	0.60%
5	487,732	0.03%
6	5,846	0.00%
7	2,842	0.00%
Total	1,879,725,404	100%

All data is a live query from our database. The wording was last updated: 11/20/2017.