Trillions

By Bloomberg

What's Trillions about?

Money goes where it's treated best. That simple truth is a big reason why more and more money—trillions, in fact—flows into a powerful, low-cost tool that's quietly transformed investing in recent years. Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, let you invest in everything from the stock market to gold like never before. This biweekly podcast will demystify them—and delight you in the process.

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Are ETFs Killing Future Sto...

02.02.2023

The rise of index funds, exchange-traded funds and passive investing in recent years has been nothing short of momentous, as investors across the US and around the world learn to rely on slow-and-steady returns. But there’s been rising concern over ...

Trillions episodes:

02.02.2023 Are ETFs Killing Future Stock Market Returns? The rise of index funds, exchange-traded funds and passive investing in recent years has been nothing short of momentous, as investors across the US and around the world learn to rely on slow-and-steady returns. But there’s been rising concern over ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 6: The Revolution SPY wasn’t just a hit product, it was an inspiration for an entire industry to take off. But it didn’t happen overnight. It took about 10 years for the ETF structure to be utilized for other asset classes and strategies, ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 5: The Sleeper SPDR S&P; 500, or SPY, is the world’s largest ETF today with about $240 billion in assets, but it wasn’t much to look at when it debuted in 1993. Some days it was on “volume life support,” trading as little ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 4: The Competition Just as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak weren’t the only two geeks in a garage working on a computer in the 1970s, the AMEX wasn’t the only exchange looking to get a market basket instrument listed. The late 1980s saw ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 3: The Approval When the SPDR S&P; 500 Trust (SPY) was submitted to the SEC in 1988, George Michael’s "Faith" was the No. 1 song and Magic Johnson led the Lakers to another NBA Championship. By the time SPY finally launched in 1993, ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 2: The Report Government reports are known more for curing insomnia than providing inspiration for revolutionary products. The October 1987 Market Break Report might be an exception. A paragraph deep in the SEC's 800-page white paper happened to outline a “product” for trading ...
01.29.2023 The ETF Story 1: The Crash Thirty years ago today, the very first exchange-traded fund started trading on the American Stock Exchange. At the time, Bill Clinton had just moved into the White House and America was trying on a new role as the world's lone ...
01.19.2023 Meet One of ETF’s Founding Fathers This month marks the 30th birthday of the SPDR S&P; 500 ETF Trust (SPY), the granddaddy ETF that started it all and is still the largest and most-traded ETF in the world. But getting this ETF launched was no small ...
01.05.2023 23 ETFs for 2023 From inflation and the Federal Reserve, China and Russia, fundamentals and Bitcoin, there’s no shortage of themes for investors to think about in 2023. And while we can’t give you investing advice, we can give you a few tickers to ...
01.04.2023 Introducing: Crash Course Hosted by Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O'Brien, Crash Course will bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic business and social upheavals occur. Every week, Crash Course will explore the lessons to be learned when creativity and ambition ...
12.22.2022 Now There Are One-Stop Shops to Launch Your ETF Got an idea for an exchange-traded fund but don’t want to deal with the logistics? A group of “white label” ETF issuers are in the business of helping people launch their own fund—and business is booming. These issuers have minted ...
12.08.2022 The ETF Era Is Going to Be Here for a While The future is very bright for ETFs, which in 2022 saw record volume and the second most flows and new launches—all astounding numbers considering the stock and bond markets were in the gutter return-wise. So what can we expect next ...
11.24.2022 What the Crypto Crash Means for ETFs The crypto market may not be dead, but it’s arguably in a temporary coma thanks to the spectacular implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. The bankrupt crypto exchange, with billions of dollars of customer funds allegedly missing, has spooked all but ...
11.10.2022 Alternative ETFs Finally Get Their Moment in the Sun It took 15 years for an ideal environment to arrive for alternative exchange-traded funds—which employ or mimic hedge fund strategies—but their moment has finally come. They’ve grown assets by 25% this year as investors look for something to help offset ...
10.27.2022 The ETF Graveyard Every year there's far more ETF launches than closures. But market headwinds are starting to accelerate the number of liquidations. So far this year the Grim Reaper has already come for about 100 ETFs. On this episode of Trillions—just in ...
10.13.2022 KPOP’s Hit Factory Comes to Investing South Korea is having a moment. Between the stellar rise of K-pop and worldwide film hits such as Parasite and Squid Game, the country has established itself as a power to be reckoned with when it comes to global entertainment. ...
09.29.2022 Cash Is Still King Boring is beautiful this year as investors rush to the relative safety (and higher yields) of exchange-traded funds that hold short-term treasuries. But what exactly is inside them? And what are the risk-rewards of the most popular ones? On this ...
09.15.2022 The Active vs Passive Scorecard Active managers have, historically, had a tough time beating their benchmarks. Yet this year may prove to be an exception; nearly half of large-cap managers are outperforming. Can they keep it up? And can anything really reverse the massive migration ...
09.01.2022 The Case for Custom Indexing A new approach to investing called direct or custom indexing effectively lets investors own stocks but with some special enhancements, such as capturing tax alpha. In other words, you get some of an ETF's charm without the ETF. For investors ...
08.18.2022 Fedsplaining with Ira Jersey Inflation. Unemployment. Consumer demand. All important economic data—but more important is how the Federal Reserve interprets it all and reacts. The central bank wields an especially powerful influence over markets, so understanding how its members think, what they are doing ...
08.04.2022 Protecting Your Portfolio From Black Swans In investing, a black swan event is something almost nobody sees coming—and to make a bet on the outcome of that unforeseen event has always been expensive and complicated. Inflation upending the market over the past year, and the Federal ...
07.21.2022 The Single-Stock ETF Era Is Born A single-stock ETF might sound like an oxymoron, but it's about to become a massive new category. These ETFs, which aim to serve up inverse and leveraged exposure to single stocks, are already a thing in Europe—and now they've come ...
07.07.2022 Now There Are ETFs Making Money While You Sleep Just when you think the world of exchange-traded funds has run out of new ideas, along comes something truly novel. Instead of slicing the market up into themes, geographies or strategies, these are dividing by time. The new ETFs are ...
06.23.2022 High-Dividend ETFs Are Having a Moment When markets plummet like they have this year, investors want to grab onto something—anything—that isn’t in free-fall. High-dividend exchange-traded funds, with their exposures to the energy and utilities sectors, have emerged as a rare bright spot, or at least a ...
06.09.2022 Just Keep Buying Investing in stock and bond markets during a boring, decade-long bull market is easy enough. It’s a little more difficult when everything is trending downward, inflation is at record highs and even Cardi B is tweeting about recession jitters. And ...
05.26.2022 The Psychology of a Selloff Unlike most declines, stocks and bonds have been sinking together so far this year. Rising inflation and a hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve are providing little comfort to investors. And yet ETFs continue to see massive flows. Eric and Joel speak ...
05.12.2022 The ESG Backlash BlackRock and Vanguard collectively own about 15% of every US company, but are they voting their shares in a way that aligns with investors in their funds? One new exchange-traded fund company, Strive Asset Management, says they aren’t, claiming they’ve ...
04.28.2022 Inside "The Bogle Effect" Three years ago, Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas and Joel Weber went to Jack Bogle’s office in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and recorded an episode of Trillions. That chat helped inspire Balchunas’s new book, “The Bogle Effect,” about the Vanguard founder’s influence on investing ...
04.14.2022 The Great Emerging Markets Debate This past year has reminded everyone why they’re called “emerging” markets. But it’s gone further this time, with investors questioning whether they even want to own anything in countries ruled by authoritarian governments, such as those in Russia and China. ...
03.31.2022 Words of Wisdom From Mr. ETF Nobody deserves the nickname Mr. ETF as much as Reggie Browne, principal of GTS and a renowned market maker. He's had an amazing behind-the-scenes vantage these past few decades because almost everyone launching a new ETF comes to ask for ...
03.17.2022 When ETFs Stop Working If ETFs were living creatures, they might be cockroaches—they can survive almost anything. And yet Russia's invasion of Ukraine has presented a rare test. The VanEck Russia ETF, or $RSX, has seen its trading halted; the product holds shares of ...
03.03.2022 How Long Will the Commodities Boom Last? One of the best-performing categories since the beginning of last year has been commodities. Everything from oil to wheat to palladium to gold is up, due in large part to inflation worries. But how much room is there left to ...
02.17.2022 When a Soccer Mom Tells You About Bitcoin Mining... Everybody has a friend (or three) who's gone "full crypto." So Joel’s ears perked up when a friend from high school and college, Char Boger, told him about her interest not in Bitcoin — the more common refrain — so ...
02.03.2022 Your Guide to the 2022 Market Roller Coaster It looks like the "easy money" days of the last two years may soon end as the Federal Reserve readies to raise interest rates and fight inflation. Markets are already off to a rocky start; monitoring ETF flows shows how ...
01.20.2022 Return Stacking to Solve the 60/40 Dilemma Everybody loves the 60/40 portfolio. And why not? It's worked really well for a long time, especially the past decade when both stocks (the 60) and bonds (the 40) went up. Yet investors fear the current inflationary environment could push ...
01.06.2022 22 ETFs to Watch in '22 What do copper miners, the metaverse and carbon credits all have in common? Absolutely nothing, except they are all tracked by ETFs that made Bloomberg Intelligence's 22 ETFs to Watch in '22 annual report. The report, which is published each ...
12.23.2021 The 2022 ETF Outlook It will be tough to beat this year for ETFs, which saw record flows of nearly one trillion dollars as well as 450 new launches. Meanwhile, the S&P; 500 returned an absurd 26%. Can this all this carry on and ...
12.09.2021 State of the ETF Industry With BlackRock’s ETF Captain While the media — us included! — bestows a lot of attention on “shiny objects” in the investment world, almost all the real money goes to the massive firms such as BlackRock. The world’s largest asset manager is fast approaching ...
11.25.2021 ETFs Go Into the Metaverse The day that Mark Zuckerberg announced he was changing the name of Facebook to Meta Platforms, the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF ($META) found a new trajectory. Since then, the ETF—which holds companies such as Nvidia, Roblox, Unity, Microsoft, and, well, ...
11.12.2021 The Rise of the Anti-Woke ETF A new batch of ETFs seeks to appeal to right-leaning investors who want an alternative to "woke" Corporate America and ESG activism. While political-themed ETFs aren't a new idea, they've never really managed to attract meaningful assets. With Americans more ...
10.28.2021 The Bitcoin ETF Race Is Over—and Also Just Beginning The quest for a bitcoin ETF has lasted more than eight years. Countless filings have ended in rejection. Then, finally, it happened—the SEC allowed a bitcoin ETF to come to market, albeit one that tracks futures as opposed to holding ...
10.14.2021 Cooking Up Returns with ETF Master Chefs ETF strategists are professional investors who create model portfolios that financial advisers can bring to their retail clients. You can think of them almost like chefs — experts who know how to combine the right ingredients into recipes that, if ...
09.30.2021 The Tax Idea That's Scaring ETF Investors Exchange-traded funds have a special super power: tax efficiency. Investors pay taxes when they sell, but not when others in the fund sell. Yet that super power is suddenly in jeopardy. A recent bill proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chair ...
09.16.2021 Nukesanity: Inside the Melt-up In Uranium ETFs Uranium ETFs are the among the best performers the last two years. Prior to that, they’d been in a decade-long bear market after the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011. But between growing acceptance of nuclear power for a carbon-free future ...
09.02.2021 Meet the Unsung Hero of the $11 Trillion Index Revolution Just as Steve Jobs didn't invent the computer, Jack Bogle didn't invent the index fund. The first index fund was actually launched back in 1971, about five years before Bogle and Vanguard brought it to the masses. On this week's ...
08.19.2021 The Future of Bitcoin Futures ETFs The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has all but made clear it will probably approve Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that hold Bitcoin futures, versus ones that hold the cryptocurrency itself. This has sparked a wave of new filings which, if approved, ...
08.05.2021 What's Behind the ETF Feeding Frenzy of 2021? ETFs have already broken their annual inflow record—and summer isn't even over yet. The pace of flows has jumped from $2 billion a day to more than $4 billion a day. Some 1,800 ETFs are taking in cash. So what's ...
07.23.2021 Peak Everything with Gina Martin Adams Everything in the market is at or around all-time highs, yet the market feels fragile at the same time. Whether it's the delta variant or inflation, there's always something to worry about. On this episode of Trillions, Eric and Joel ...
07.09.2021 David vs Goliath: Inside Engine No. 1's Activist ETF In late May, Engine No. 1 shook Corporate America. Despite owning just .02% of Exxon Mobil — not long ago the world’s most valuable company — the little-known activist investor was able to install three new directors on the company’s ...
06.24.2021 The ETF Ticker Premium One of the more colorful aspects of the exchange-traded industry are the tickers. The best are stuff of legend; others are totally forgettable. But who's in charge of these three- and four-letter identifiers? How are they reserved? Do you own ...

Older episodes

Trillions

What's Trillions about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Trillions episodes:

Are ETFs Killing Future Stock Market Returns?

The ETF Story 6: The Revolution

The ETF Story 5: The Sleeper

The ETF Story 4: The Competition

The ETF Story 3: The Approval

The ETF Story 2: The Report

The ETF Story 1: The Crash

Meet One of ETF’s Founding Fathers

23 ETFs for 2023

Introducing: Crash Course

Now There Are One-Stop Shops to Launch Your ETF

The ETF Era Is Going to Be Here for a While

What the Crypto Crash Means for ETFs

Alternative ETFs Finally Get Their Moment in the Sun

The ETF Graveyard

KPOP’s Hit Factory Comes to Investing

Cash Is Still King

The Active vs Passive Scorecard

The Case for Custom Indexing

Fedsplaining with Ira Jersey

Protecting Your Portfolio From Black Swans

The Single-Stock ETF Era Is Born

Now There Are ETFs Making Money While You Sleep

High-Dividend ETFs Are Having a Moment

Just Keep Buying

The Psychology of a Selloff

The ESG Backlash

Inside "The Bogle Effect"

The Great Emerging Markets Debate

Words of Wisdom From Mr. ETF

When ETFs Stop Working

How Long Will the Commodities Boom Last?

When a Soccer Mom Tells You About Bitcoin Mining...

Your Guide to the 2022 Market Roller Coaster

Return Stacking to Solve the 60/40 Dilemma

22 ETFs to Watch in '22

The 2022 ETF Outlook

State of the ETF Industry With BlackRock’s ETF Captain

ETFs Go Into the Metaverse

The Rise of the Anti-Woke ETF

The Bitcoin ETF Race Is Over—and Also Just Beginning

Cooking Up Returns with ETF Master Chefs

The Tax Idea That's Scaring ETF Investors

Nukesanity: Inside the Melt-up In Uranium ETFs

Meet the Unsung Hero of the $11 Trillion Index Revolution

The Future of Bitcoin Futures ETFs

What's Behind the ETF Feeding Frenzy of 2021?

Peak Everything with Gina Martin Adams

David vs Goliath: Inside Engine No. 1's Activist ETF

The ETF Ticker Premium