| | Good morning and happy Monday. Oh, cool … you have a podcast. To be fair, Nicolai Tangen has an interesting perspective. He's the CEO of Norway's $2.1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the biggest in the world. He's outspoken and public in a way that financial services leaders almost universally aren't. And he's a little kooky, as evidenced by his donning of a Domino's uniform in an episode where he made pizza. As The New York Times pointed out in a profile of Tangen last week, the CEO's mission to make Norway's pension more visible has had its ups and downs. Conversations with guests (often other CEOs) have provided him with insight on managing the fund, he told the publication. But critics have said that Tangen's comments on the dangers of climate change and AI, and the publicity in general, have drawn unnecessary attention to the fund. Asset management execs can learn something from this, even if it's just how to toss some dough. | | | | | | | | To anyone surprised by the revelation that there are more ETFs than US stocks, there are far more varieties of cryptocurrency out there, ranging from bitcoin to Fartcoin. The latter example, with a market cap of $400 million, is surprisingly not that ridiculous, compared with many other downmarket digital assets, whose names we probably shouldn't mention. The good news is that out of more than 10,000 crypto varieties out there, very few will probably materialize in ETF format. With only two years' of history in crypto exchange-traded products in the US, it's early days. And the industry may be on the cusp of a product explosion, as the SEC recently granted exchanges permission to use generic listing standards for fund issuers. "The ETF industry is excellent at creating new products, and the wide variety of funds that they've invented for the stocks market will be replicated for the crypto market," said Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. "So, watch for lots more to come." Ghosts of Cryptos Past, Present and Yet to Come Crypto ETFs are no longer just about exposure to digital assets, and many of the newer products are leveraged or buffered. Staking is also becoming common. For example, Grayscale's Ethereum Staking ETF made its first rewards distribution to shareholders at the beginning of 2026, an industry first. The financial services industry has been all but forced to accept crypto ETFs, and one of its biggest players, Vanguard, announced last month that it would allow some of the more well-established products on its platform. Most recently, Morgan Stanley filed for its own products, including ETFs focused on bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. To date, there are about 140 US exchange-traded products focused on crypto, according to data from Morningstar Direct: - Nearly half of the total $146 billion in assets are in one product, the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT). Of the top 20 ETFs by assets, only one, the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF ($717 million, 17th biggest), has exposure to anything other than bitcoin or Ethereum.
- The existing list of products covers other digital asset types, including XRP, Litecoin, BNB, Chainlink, Hedera, Stellar, Dogecoin, Bonk, Horizen, Basic Attention Token, Sui, Filecoin, Livepeer, Polkadot and Near. There are also a few crypto index ETFs.
- Issuers have also filed for a range of other categories, such as Injective, Hyperliquid, Cardano, Avalanche, Bittensor and Trumpcoin. One company, Canary, famously filed last year for PENGU, an ETF focused on the Pudgy Penguins NFTs.
  It's a Buyer's Market: If the assets and flows across crypto ETFs show anything, it's that investors primarily want bitcoin and Ethereum. There may be room for other digital asset types, but financial advisors, who usually recommend small allocations to crypto, probably won't be interested anytime soon. Advisors may consider index and buffer ETFs, as well as products that mix digital assets and equities, "but esoteric funds won't gain much traction with advisors, any more than pink sheet stocks do," Edelman said. "So, meme coins and unusual trading strategies will remain small, serving a niche market." Written by Emile Hallez | | | | | | | | | Photo via Betterment | Enroll and earn up to $1,500 with Betterment. Open any Betterment individual investing account (including an IRA) and make a deposit to earn up to $1,500. The more you invest, the more you can earn. Ready to put automated investing to work for you? Get started with Betterment.  | | | | | No advice, thanks. J.P. Morgan Asset Management has had enough of proxy advisors, recently announcing in an internal memo that going forward, it will rely on an in-house, AI-powered program for data about US-listed companies that its portfolio managers use to guide their votes. That decision, the first such change in the industry among major asset managers, follows through on hints CEO Jamie Dimon had long been making. "We are proud to announce that J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management is now the first major investment firm to fully eliminate any reliance on external proxy advisors for our US voting process," an internal memo read. "Building on decades of in-house, research-driven voting rigor, we have launched Proxy IQ — an AI-powered tool on Spectrum that aggregates and analyzes proprietary data from more than 3,000 annual company meetings." Cut It Out Dimon has been a vocal critic of proxy advisory firms, particularly the big two: Institutional Shareholder Services, or ISS, and Glass Lewis. Essentially calling for such firms to be eliminated, Dimon echoed the broad opposition to proxy advisors across the industry. Widely, the two firms have been cast as a duopoly working to advance liberal causes, a characterization disputed by shareholder advocacy groups. Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, "Protecting American Investors from Foreign-Owned and Politically-Motivated Proxy Advisors," directing the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Labor and Federal Trade Commission to increase their oversight of proxy advisors, naming ISS and Glass Lewis specifically. A spokesperson for ISS did not comment on JPMorgan's change. "We are proud of our four-decade record serving the global institutional investor community with independent and high-quality governance research, recommendations, and voting solutions and will continue to do so as we prepare for the 2026 annual meeting season," the spokesperson said. Proxy measures, particularly those in the environmental and social categories, fell dramatically at the start of 2025, according to data from Georgeson: - There were 133 proposals focused on environmental issues last year, down from 173 in 2024 and 180 in 2023, with average shareholder support for the measures at 15%, down from 21% and 24%, respectively.
- The number of socially themed proposals was 223, down from 335 in 2024 and 354 in 2023, with average support falling to 17%, from 20% and 22%, respectively.
- Both ISS and Glass Lewis were less likely to recommend votes in favor of environmental proposals last year. ISS's "for" recommendations dropped from 61% to 15%, and those by Glass Lewis went from 25% to 19%.
Let's Take This Private: Filing proxies is one mechanism that activist shareholders have to get companies to change practices, with ballot measures often being a last resort. Another method is encouraging companies privately to get them to make changes, and that approach still appears to be effective, said Bryan McGannon, managing director at US SIF. But watch for more asset managers, particularly big ones with the means to invest in AI, moving away from using proxy advisory firms, he noted. Conversely, the use of AI "certainly could lower the barrier for entry for new entrants in the proxy advisory space." Written by Emile Hallez | | | | | | | | | International exchange-traded funds hit a "six" in 2025 (that's the cricket equivalent of a home run, by the way.) Foreign equities performed exceptionally well last year, nearly doubling US stock returns. Ipso facto, ETFs tracking international equity markets experienced similar highs, with inflows setting records at $217 billion, more than twice what they totaled in 2024, according to Morningstar Direct data. The "sell America" trend that was supposed to materialize post-Liberation Day tariff impositions never actually happened, at least not to a sustained degree. However, that didn't stop investors from pooling heavily into international products, driven largely by a weaker US dollar, per Morningstar. In fact, of the top 25 best performing international equity ETFs, only four suffered outflows. (That's basically like the industry bowling over all the wickets, or whatever.) On Top of the World If we just shared the top five funds of 2025, it would mostly be BlackRock. Its iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) took the No. 1 spot, surging nearly 100% while taking in almost $1.9 billion. Meanwhile, the iShares funds tracking Peruvian, Spanish and Polish markets all experienced returns greater than 75% and raked in about $575 million collectively. Here are some of the other top international equity ETFs of 2025: - Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF (FLKR) jumped roughly 92% and pulled in $26.3 million.
- VanEck Africa ETF (AFK) performance shot up 69% while gaining $33 million in flows.
- Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF (FRDM) increased 60%, while bringing in $465 million in new assets last year.
Back Down to Earth: While anyone who went big on international ETFs is probably feeling really good about themselves right about now, this year could be very different. "A lot is up in the air going into 2026," Zachary Evens, manager research analyst at Morningstar, told ETF Upside. "I won't speculate on expected returns, but there's still a lot of uncertainty in markets related to central bank policy, economic growth, geopolitical risk and other factors." Written by Griffin Kelly | | | | | - Room to Grow: Bitcoin ETFs are still in their infancy, BlackRock says.
- Fun with EUFN: The iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF returned a strong 65% in 2025.
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