87 Different Billion Dollar ETFs (And Counting)

That was a nice addition, Matt. The next step, if we're attempting to guage the relative strength of each ETF operation (or perhaps the relative value to fee conscious investors) would be to look at the expense ratios for all and multiply them by assets for baseline revenue.

We can save that for the movie, er, feature article. For those of you who missed my original blog rating the U.S. ETF issuers, here it is. The add-on by Matt opened a few new channels of thought for me. One was that (and I follow this pretty closely) there are more billion dollar funds out there than I'd imagined. BGI - 56? Wow. But you've also got #s 2 and 3 on my list - SSgA and Vanguard - with 11 and 8.

Which brings us to surprise number 2 - SSgA's 11 billion dollar funds. Sure I know SPY and GLD and that real estate, ah - must be Select Sector SPDRs for a few. If I break out my handy AMEX data sheet (because I know all the SSgAs save GLD are listed on the AMEX), here's the breakdown: Diamonds (right), 8 Select Sector SPDRs, GLD and the Real Estate. The global real estate also has nearly a billion. So that's that.

MDY is Bank of New York and I can't believe a small cap SPDRs was never launched...

Vanguard? 1) Total Market 2) Emerging Markets 3) Europe 4) Growth 5) Value 6) REIT 7) Pacific 8) Midcap. All also are on the AMEX sheet, and they've got a number including small looming just below a billion. Interesting.

Sorry BGI, I don't have enough hours today to list out your 56.

Working down the list - any other surprises? Well to be honest, not really. (one definite NON surprise is that the big assets, nearly across the board, are nearly always around the biggest recent returns) I know about PowerShares four big hits, though the 26 more they have in the 100-999 million category (compared to say, SSgA's and Vanguard's 21 might qualify as a mild surprise to me. Wisdom Tree (WSDT.PK) hasn't had one break a billion yet, and ProShares has a couple and Rydex, Deutche Bank (DB) and BNY (for MDY) one.

Total in the billion dollar category: 87(!) among 9 issuers if we count Merrill (MER) for the HOLDRs (3).