Published on 25 May 2024 on Zacks via Yahoo Finance
5 Multi-Billion Dollar ETFs Beating the S&P 500 YTD
The S&P 500 Index has been on a remarkable rally this year, crossing the 5,300 milestone for the first time ever, underscoring strong confidence. Solid corporate earnings and rate cut bets have been driving the stocks higher. Renewed AI craze also added to the strong momentum. The benchmark has risen 10.4% so far this year.The rally has been broad-based with most of the corners of the broad investment world enjoying huge gains. While the list is very long, we have highlighted five ETFs that are beating the S&P 500 Index in the year-to-date time frame and are popular with large AUMs, say more than $20 billion. These include Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC, iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF IVW, SPDR Gold Trust ETF GLD, iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF QUAL and Vanguard Information Technology ETF VGT.All these funds are passively managed, meaning that they aim to replicate the performance of a specific index. By tracking a particular index, liquidity is high for these funds. Unlike actively managed funds, they do not involve frequent trading or active decision-making by fund managers. Instead, they simply mirror the holdings and performance of the target index. As these funds require less trading and research, these have lower fees compared to actively managed ETFs.
Bulls Are Here
According to the latest survey from Bank of America, expectations of interest rate cuts coupled with earnings optimism have made investors the "most bullish" since November 2021. About 82% of global fund managers expect the first rate cut by the Fed in the second half, while 78% say a recession is unlikely in the next 12 months.Wall Street analysts also have tuned more bullish on the S&P 500 Index on rate cut expectations. One of Wall Street’s most prominent bears, Morgan Stanley, turned positive on the outlook for U.S. stocks by lifting the price target for the S&P 500 to 5,400 from 4,500 (read: ETFs to Bet on Analysts' Bullish Forecast for S&P 500).Below, we have profiled the abovementioned ETFs: