February 18, 2011 
Exchange Traded Funds are still rapidly growing and the amount of capital under management by the three main ETF providers (who make up 85% of the market) is simply astonishing. For example the biggest ETF provider, iShares, has approximately $370 billion under management in their funds! They have 218 different ETF products and still growing!
Below is a table of the top ten ETFs by market capitalisation, which provides and interesting insight into the biggest investment themes today.
| No. | Name | Ticker | Assets as of September 30, 2010 (in $ billions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SPDR S&P 500 ETF | SPY | 78.01 |
| 2 | streetTRACKS Gold Trust ETF | GLD | 54.81 |
| 3 | iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund | EEM | 45.09 |
| 4 | Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF | VWO | 36.2 |
| 5 | iShares MSCI EAFE | EFA | 34.94 |
| 6 | iShares S&P 500 | IVV | 22.69 |
| 7 | Power Shares QQQ Nasdaq 100 | QQQQ | 22.14 |
| 8 | iShares Barclays TIPS Bond | TIP | 20.28 |
| 9 | iShares Barclays Investment Grade Corp Bond | LQD | 14.84 |
| 10 | Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF | VTI | 14.63 |
I’m surprised how much capital there is invested in the emerging markets, but perhaps it is to be expected as people search for growth as Western markets stagnate. There are clearly also a lot of investors searching for safety (e.g. Gold and TIPS bonds which are inflation linked).
It will be interesting to see how this top 10 grows and changes over the next 12 months.
Alistair Milne 
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