When it comes to ETFs, there are three big players, and then there’s everyone else, but in the first quarter, there was one asset manager to rule them all.
Data out Friday from FactSet showed that Vanguard pulled in $48.5 billion in the first three months of the year, more than four times its nearest competitor, BlackRock.
See: Three fund managers may soon control nearly half of all corporate voting power, researchers warn
Some of the other big gainers during the quarter reflect the market churn: the World Gold Council, issuer of the first gold ETF GLD, +2.61% , picked up about $4.3 billion. And Innovator, creator of a market buffer product profiled by MarketWatch last summer, was also among the top ten.
| Company | Flow |
| Vanguard | 48,539,052,187 |
| Blackrock | 10,068,581,279 |
| ProShares | 6,671,233,889 |
| Charles Schwab | 5,938,401,000 |
| Rafferty Asset Management | 4,769,158,010 |
| World Gold Council | 4,262,691,510 |
| Concierge Technologies | 2,878,676,302 |
| Citi | 939,203,144 |
| Goldman Sachs | 858,715,650 |
| Innovator | 788,279,478 |
| VanEck | (632,982,896) |
| Deutsche Bank | (989,417,442) |
| Credit Suisse | (1,211,195,262) |
| WisdomTree | (1,247,189,328) |
| Barclays | (1,294,826,847) |
| Northern Trust | (1,296,045,933) |
| Allianz | (1,663,697,300) |
| JPMorgan Chase | (2,590,410,432) |
| State Street | (3,567,170,794) |
| Invesco | (3,770,835,690) |
As noted in the chart above, one of the biggest losers was State Street, one of the three biggest fund managers. Its flagship fund, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, +1.52% , is still the biggest —but it also saw the most outflows during the quarter, losing over $13 billion.
That’s because institutional investors use SPY as a trading tool, as previously reported, while Individual investors wanting to buy and hold the stocks in the S&P 500 SPX, +1.44% are far more likely to use the cheaper Vanguard version VOO, +1.48%. Indeed, with $18.4 billion in inflows in the quarter, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF was far and away the biggest winner.
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