Learn about ETF management

While ETFs can be either passively or actively managed, they all trade on an exchange and offer exposure to equities, fixed income or other asset classes.

Most ETFs are passively managed, seeking to track a traditional market-capitalization-weighted benchmark such as the S&P/TSX Composite Index. Index ETFs typically invest in the physical securities that make up an index, however synthetic swap-based index ETFs are also available.

In recent years, an increasing number of actively managed ETFs have become available. These include rules-based alternatively weighted ETFs (often called smart beta or strategic beta strategies), which seek to track non-market-cap-weighted indexes usually in an attempt to outperform the market or manage risk.

Other newer offerings include balanced ETFs, which provide exposure to multiple assets classes and feature regular rebalancing to maintain a desired level of risk.

Globally, assets in ETFs and other exchange-traded products (ETPs) total more than $15.1 trillion, invested in more than 13,830 products.¹

^{1 Source: Vanguard calculations using data from ETFGI, as of March 31, 2025.}