From Zephyr’s Adjusted for Risk podcast, Ryan Nauman interviews Roxanna Islam, Head of Sector and Industry Research at TMX VettaFi, about major ETF trends and what they mean for advisors. Islam explains VettaFi’s role in helping build and grow ETF products and highlights fast-growing areas including spot Bitcoin ETFs (launched January 2024) and the broader crypto ETF ecosystem, noting flow consolidation into larger funds like iShares’ IBIT amid a Bitcoin pullback, and differences versus Ether products. She also discusses the rapid growth of options-based ETFs, defined outcome/buffer ETFs, and a return to thematic investing such as AI infrastructure, space, and defense, including rising interest around SpaceX exposure. The conversation covers challenges of putting private markets/private credit into ETFs due to liquidity and transparency constraints, and clarifies tokenization as moving real-world assets onto blockchain rails, including a filing to tokenize the TBIL ETF.
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Learn more about TMX VettaFi here.
00:00 Welcome and Setup
01:10 Meet Roxanna Islam
03:26 ETF Trends Overview
04:37 Crypto and Bitcoin ETFs
06:01 Options and Buffer ETFs
06:40 Thematic ETFs AI and Space
08:40 SpaceX Exposure via ETFs
11:02 Private Markets in ETFs
15:34 Bitcoin Pullback and Flows
21:45 Overcrowded Crypto Products
25:37 Tokenization Explained
28:40 What Advisors Should Do
30:18 Wrap Up and Resources
