Today First Trust has announced the reorganization of several of its ETFs, to be completed in the second quarter. The firm is known for rarely closing ETFs and instead tends to repurpose them.
The $40 million First Trust Value Line 100 Exchange-Traded Fund (FVL) will be absorbed into the $10.4 billion First Trust Value Line Dividend Index Fund (FVD). Although $40 million is nothing to sneeze at, both FVL and FVD launched in 2003 and have had more than 15 years to gather assets. FVD has clearly been the more successful of the two in that regard.
Meanwhile, several of the firm’s developed market ETFs will be folded into the $673 million First Trust Developed Markets ex-US AlphaDEX Fund (FDT). Those funds and their assets under management include the following:
All of the country ETFs being absorbed into FDT launched in 2011 or 2012 and have less than $5 million in assets under management.
Finally, the $25.7 million First Trust Mega AlphaDEX Fund (FMK) will be absorbed into the $26.5 million First Trust Dow 30 Equal Weight ETF (EDOW). While FMK launched in 2011, EDOW rolled out just a couple of years ago in 2017. Not only do they have similar AUM, both track equal-weighted indexes of top-tier large-cap stocks, and FMK’s holdings overlap with fully half of the stocks included in EDOW.
Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]
