The FT digs into why some US based investment veterans still prefer to stick to no-frills vanilla products despite asset managers launching more sophisticated ETFs that track indices based on factors other than companies’ market capitalisation.
Fred Fern founded Los Angeles-based Churchill Management in 1963 and began investing in ETFs roughly a decade ago. His company tries to pick the winning sector within each market cycle and uses ETFs that focus on certain themes such as technology. “I don’t like an active ETF because we want to make the management decision ourselves,” he says. Yet ETF inflows continue to target the lowest-cost index products, such as the vanilla S&P 500 funds that have helped swell asset managers like Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors.
https://www.ft.com/content/b94940a2-4d56-11e8-97e4-13afc22d86d4