Dan Ives, who worked on Wall Street for 25 years, gained notoriety for promoting technology stocks on business television shows while sporting brightly colored shirts and coats. Ives then took a fresh approach in June, putting his name on his own exchange-traded fund, the Dan IVES Wedbush AI Revolution ETF, which consists of 30 equities.
In a phone interview, Ives stated, “There are thousands of ETFs, but there is only one Dan Ives.”
The new ETF IVES, according to Ives, head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, combines all of his expertise into a portfolio of “winners” that he has selected within the developing field of artificial intelligence. Wedbush’s debut ETF, the Ives product, handled around $344 million in assets as of July 16.
Ives is participating in the 2025 ETF boom. Almost every current or prospective asset manager on Wall Street has found success using the exchange-traded fund (ETF), which is a basket of assets listed on an exchange like stocks, to reach individual investors with a variety of strategies, some of which are hazardous and complex.
According to Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research and analytics at CFRA Research, the number of ETFs listed in the United States has increased to over 4,300 in recent years, and the industry’s assets were at record highs of almost $11.6 trillion at the end of June. According to a State Street Investment Management report, investors poured an unprecedented $556 billion into U.S.-listed ETFs in the first half of this year, setting them up to break the annual record in 2025 after reaching an all-time high of $1.15 trillion in 2024. According to data by JPMorgan Chase & Co., the total assets under management in the U.S. business have increased from $4.25 trillion at the end of May 2020, when there were about 2,300 ETFs listed in the nation.
Since its inception in the United States in 1993 with the introduction of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that only tracked the S&P 500, the sector has expanded to include exposure to a wide range of assets, including equities, bonds, cryptocurrency, and alternative strategies linked to hedge funds and private markets. With the announcement of new ETFs with a “America First” investment concept and a focus on cryptocurrency assets, even a corporation associated with the US president is getting involved in this game.
Although popular low-cost funds that monitor fixed-income and broad equity indexes have caused assets to skyrocket, the ETF sector has expanded to encompass a far wider range of strategies, including actively managed funds managed by investing experts who aim to outperform the market. Additionally, investors have access to a wide range of thematic ETFs that are concentrated on topics like artificial intelligence or the music business. Additionally, there are ETFs that are utilized as trading instruments to increase wagers on individual stocks, as well as funds that are created using options-based strategies to offer income or downside protection.
It is a market where traders can increase returns from a single stock’s rise or profit from its decline by using leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These ETFs are dangerous since they can rise or fall in a single day. They are not intended to convey opinions about long-term investing.
“There’s so much variety and complexity of product out there,” Scott Chronert, head of Citigroup’s global ETF research and U.S. equity strategy, said over the phone, referring to the current over 4,000 tickers. “How do you navigate all this?” he added, referring to regular investors.
“We don’t want investing to be perceived as gambling.”
The Exchange conference, a well-liked annual ETF event that was formerly held in Miami Beach, Florida, brought together asset managers and members of the financial-advice sector at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in late March. A casino with slots and table games was accessible from the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas’ main entrance.
The move to Las Vegas this year highlighted some of the ways the ETF sector has both expanded and flourished, if its early days were all about giving investors inexpensive and varied exposure to the stock market by following broad indexes.
“Off the Las Vegas Strip,” Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at ETF analytics company TMX VettaFi, told MarketWatch during the Exchange event in March. “We don’t want people to think of investing as gambling.”
In addition to their simplicity of trading (ETFs may be purchased and sold all day long like stocks), investors have been drawn to exchange-traded funds because of their transparency, affordability, and tax efficiency. ETFs give the general public access to a variety of asset classes without requiring a minimum investment amount, including in previously closed-off areas like private markets and hedge fund-style strategies that were previously exclusively accessible to institutional and high-net-worth investors who could afford exorbitant fees.
In the ETF sector, Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund company in the world, is currently establishing relationships with regular investors. Bridgewater co-chief investment officer Karen Karniol-Tambour was one of the speakers at the Exchange event in Las Vegas. During an investment session on the hedge-fund company’s “all-weather” strategy, Karniol-Tambour presented a case for portfolio diversification without “losing return.” In early March, State Street and the hedge fund company introduced the actively managed SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF ALLW, which allows investors to invest in commodities, nominal and inflation-linked bonds, and equities worldwide.
The costs associated with actively managed ETFs are typically higher than those of passive funds, which appeals to fund managers who can attract investors seeking greater returns. The SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF is more costly than basic index funds that roughly mirror the performance of US equities and bonds, with an expense ratio of 0.85% of invested assets. The iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF AGG charges a fee of 0.03%, whilst the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY has an expense ratio of 0.0945%.
Managed futures, a methodical, trend-following approach to trading futures contracts across many asset classes, is one hedge fund-related strategy that has become more widely accessible through ETFs.
BlackRock introduced the iShares Managed Futures Active ETF ISMF in March. Fidelity Investments introduced the Fidelity Managed Futures ETF FFUT in June, and Invesco listed the Invesco Managed Futures Strategy ETF IMF later that same month.
As the industry works to find methods to incorporate private assets into exchange-traded funds, State Street’s private-credit ETF generated a lot of interest in late February. In recent years, private-credit funds have acquired a significant amount of capital from wealthy and institutional investors in order to lend money to higher-risk borrowers that were formerly served by banks, such as private equity-backed enterprises. It is possible to classify certain forms of private credit as investment grade.
The fact that private assets are illiquid yet ETFs can be traded all day long presents a liquidity mismatch, which is one aspect of the problem. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, State Street’s ETF, which may invest in private credit sourced by the prestigious Wall Street firm Apollo Global Management and also holds publicly traded debt securities, changed its name to SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF PRIV in late March without altering its investment approach. According to a May SEC filing, State Street is preparing the SPDR SSGA Short Duration IG Public & Private Credit ETF, a second ETF that offers exposure to private debt that Apollo may obtain.
According to Alyson Shupe, head of global product strategy at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, in a phone interview, the worst-case scenario for a liquidity mismatch is that “there’s some kind of crazy market event and everyone is redeeming their shares from the ETF,” while fund managers are unable to withdraw some of their positions in private markets, or that a “backstop” of some kind is required to supply investors with liquidity.
Private markets also offer equity exposure to ETF investors. According to data on the EntrepreneurShares website, as of July 16, Elon Musk’s privately held SpaceX was the second-largest holding of the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF XOVR, with a weight of more than 7%. In December, ERShares announced that the ETF had relaunched last year with at least 85% of its portfolio invested in an index of 30 large-cap entrepreneurial stocks in the United States, with up to 15% of the portfolio consisting of private companies such as SpaceX.
Increasing earnings and losses
The Defiance Long HIMS ETF Daily Target 2X Traders can rely on HIMZ to increase possible profits from the stock of Hims & Hers Health Inc. In June, those who did so were informed that the telehealth company’s important collaboration with Novo Nordisk, a manufacturer of weight-loss medications, had been abruptly canceled. Following the news, the company’s stock fell 34.6% in a single day. However, according to FactSet data, the ETF, which aims to deliver daily leveraged investment outcomes that are twice as large as the daily percentage move in the underlying share price, fell by about 69%. The carnage highlighted the dangers of leveraged exchange-traded funds.
Those deals can occasionally be profitable. On February 4, the Direxion Daily PLTR Bull 2X Shares PLTU, a leveraged exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to magnify bullish bets based on Palantir Technologies Inc.’s (PLTR) daily performance, surged by almost 47%. Additionally, on June 5, the GraniteShares 2x Short TSLA Daily ETF TSDD, which gives traders a means to wager on the possible decline of Tesla Inc.’s stock by aiming to double the daily inverse results of its performance, rose 28.5%. That day, Tesla’s stock (TSLA) fell more than 14%.
