Big 3 Pass On ETF Trade Group

The new National Exchange Traded Funds Association, or NEFTA, will be without the exchange-traded products universe's heaviest hitters as it starts life as the industry's first trade association. BlackRock's BLK iShares, State Street's STT State Street Global Advisors and Vanguard have all decided against joining NEFTA. The trio, sometimes accused of being an ETF monopoly, account for massive chunk of U.S. ETF and ETN assets under management. At the end of April, the three had combined exchange-traded products AUM of just over $1 trillion while the ETFs and ETNs listed in the U.S. had just over $1.2 trillion in AUM combined, according to data from the ETF Industry Association. The chairman of NEFTA is John T. Hyland, the chief investment officer of United States Commodity Fund, the firm behind the U.S. Oil Fund USO. NEFTA's vice chairman is IndexIQ CEO Adam Patti. IndexIQ sponsors the IndexIQ Merger Arbitrage ETF MNA, among others. The debut of NEFTA was announced last month but high-level executives from SSgA and Vanguard confirmed in the most recent issue of Barron's that their firms will not be part of NEFTA. The Investment Company Institute, or ICI, has been the lobbying operation for the fund industry for more than seven decades and that is the group iShares, SSgA and Vanguard or opting to stick with over NEFTA, Barron's reported. For more on NEFTA, please click HERE.