ETF Edge - ETF Flowdown: Active Management, Bonds, Crypto & Beyond 12/11/23

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

CNBC’s Bob Pisani sat down with Ben Slavin, Global Head of ETFs at BNY Mellon, and Andrew McOrmond, Managing Director at WallachBeth Capital. They discussed all manner of trends in the ETF industry – everything from short-term bonds and active management’s time in the sun to the growth trade, covered call strategies, crypto and more… Plus, they tackled the “flowdown” for 2024 – as the S&P 500 hovers around a new high and investors position themselves for what many are hoping will be a broad-based recovery ahead. In the “Markets 102” portion, Bob continued the conversation with Ben Slavin from BNY Mellon. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ETF Edge podcast is sponsored by InvescoQQQ, supporting the innovators changing the world. Investco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to ETF Edge, the podcast. If you're looking to learn the latest insights on all things, exchange, traded funds, you are in the right place. Every week we're bringing you interviews, market analysis, and breaking down what it all means for investors. I'm your host, Bob Pisani. Today on the show, we'll discuss all manner of trends in the ETF industry, everything from short-term bonds and active management, time in the sun, to the growth trade, covered call strategies, crypto ETFs, and a lot more.

Plus, it will give you the flowdown for 2024 as the S&P 500 hovers around a new high, and investors position themselves for what many are hoping will be a broad-based recovery ahead. Let's hope. Here's my conversation with Ben Slavin, Global Head of ETS at BNY Mellon and Andrew McGormon, the managing director at Wallach Beth Capital. Ben B&Y Mellon, you're the largest asset service provider in the ETF industry. you see all the flows, a trillion dollars into money market funds in 2020. I think we're at $6 trillion right now.

This end of the year rally back into stocks is, are we seeing flows back into equity ETFs? People putting their money where the market is going. Well, look, that's exactly what we saw here in November. You saw that enormous cash pile up going to money markets, you know, and ETF flows were muted. Then November comes, and we started to see that money really come back off the sidelines. you saw almost $100 billion in flow into ETFs. And again, unlike the beginning of the year where we saw that flow going into fixed income, especially at the short end of the curve, you saw some selling in fixed income

and a large piece of that money going into equities for sure. You know, Andrew, some of the big trades this year do seem to be reversing $94 billion in inflows in November. But I noticed something very interesting here. We had $94 billion in inflows. Year to date, $460 billion. Here's the new numbers here. That's just shy of $500 billion where we would consider it significant. But look at this.

Outflows, that should say outflows there from ultra-short government bonds, $7.1 billion. There's been inflows all year into that. This month, this is for the month of November, outflows of $7.1 billion. I wonder if that is start of a trend here. I think it shows you some confidence in the market. Just look at the general economy. The spending is starting to ease up on the restaurant. in retail level and then that should be the top.

The market lags the economy. We know, I mean, sorry, the economy lags the market. We know that. So I think that's a sign that the more money is going to come in. And you talked about the money market funds. How about all the money that's in, like, the Goldman Sachs market accounts and, you know, that aren't even in an ETFs. All that is probably money that people took out of equities, even if they're just single

stockholders because of a lack of confidence in the market besides the Big Seven. And now they're going to start to see, okay, it's safe to get back in the market. They never get in at the bottom, right? We've seen a little bit of a rally. I think that's going to be a big sign for 20. The knock on this whole story about all this money on the sidelines and money market funds is a lot of it is like, you know, my mother's savings account. They weren't in stocks to begin with. She just moved it out.

Actually, this is a true story. My mother moved money out of her savings account in March into. Or 5%. Yeah. Into one-year CDs. And she's not necessarily going to go back into the stock market. So, but there is a point here about this that people seem very comfortable with that 5% yield. But as yields start going down, those money market.

yields are going to start coming down. It was a short-term instruments by definition. It seems logical that the stock market, if this continues, has got to recapture some of that money. It seems logical. Absolutely logical. I mean, look, that 5% yield is giving equities, certainly some competition. Again, you've started to see that switch, but, you know, really, if you step back and you look at what's going on in flows, and again, it's just indicative of maybe where investor sentiment is going to be going forward. But in November, over 1,800 different E.T. were positive and over 200 took in, you know, a significant amount of money more than $100 million each. So it is broad-based. And again, as those money market yields come down, things will change.

And certainly there are even are some investors that are looking to lock in those rates at the longer end of the curve. That's what I think. I think they're going to get used to 5%. Like you said in the example of your mother, she's used to 1%. Now gets 5. So even some of the younger investors is going to say, okay, I was really comfortable with 5. You're not going to get it in a money market, but you're going to get in a dividend producing ETF, and one of the option derivative ETFs, you can still get that yield. And I think that's where the money will vote, or even high-yield ETFs, the traditional. And we talk all the time about flows, and I just want to point out something. Most of the time, flows are noise. I don't pay a lot of attention to them, but $94 billion last

month, that was a fairly large number. That was statistically significant. Would you say so? Yeah, it certainly was, I think it was the fifth highest on record, so that's got to get your attention. Although seasonally, ETFs have done well in Q4. I think, again, here part of it was the markets. The other part, certainly, I think tax loss harvesting is another big catalyst for ETF flows.

So certainly there's noise in the number, but it was definitely... How do you use tax loss harvesting with ETFs? Well, look, I mean, I think in certainly, you know, certainly in the mutual fund structure, you saw many funds, certainly on a relative to ETFs, pay capital

gains. And, you know, these are situations where it provides investors an opportunity to harvest losses, rotate back into another product, and often ETFs have been the beneficiary, to be able to, quote, unquote, harvest those gains, and then again, maintain their market exposure. And again, a lot of this seems to happen in the fourth quarter, which makes sense, obviously given tax planning, but also when these funds make their capital gain distribution announcements,

so investors can calculate what their tax liability might be. How about... It would be the bigger index name, spy cues. using that for tax-less harvesting. Are investors still piling into big-cap tech stocks, or are they positioning themselves for a broader recovery in 2024? I've been noting the RSP, the equal-weight S&P 500, has been outperforming the S&P,

the market-cap-weighted S&P for over a month, and there's been inflows into the RSP. That signal is some kind of confidence. The whole market rallies, I don't think tech can keep the same lead they had before. You know, like you have a product like the Pacer Cow, C-O-W-Z, right, which is a value play, which offers this dividend. So I think that gap closes. I mean, I wouldn't suggest short tech, you know, long value, but certainly just by kind of reducing your exposure to those tech names, those seven big names, if the overall market rallies, I think that gap will close. Yeah, I look, and I also think, you know, we are certainly seeing a little bit of a, again, that broad-based,

move in terms of flows, again, gives you some idea of where, you know, where investors head might be at. But certainly on RSP, I think, you know, it is a concern of advisors and certainly the clients that we talk to that are concerned about that concentration risk in the, you know, in those, at least the magnificent seven and some of the indexes, but also those who are looking for ways to potentially place a mean reversion in some of those lower valuations that you're seeing. And RSP is just one little example of how to play that trade. I want to talk about one of the big trends of 2023, and that was the covered call strategy.

It started with JEPB a year and a half ago, but we had some record product launches in active management this year. But as I mentioned, much of it was for these covered call strategies. And those of you don't know this, you own the S&P, for example, and then you essentially buy call options on it. So in my head, this is not really stock picking old school active management. You're just doing an option overlay. It's an insurance.

So why did that take off so much? Well, I think, again, I'm proud of the ETF industry itself for coming out with these products and bring them to the light. It's going to increase option flow, increases people understanding about trading what they are. What it provides is, let's talk for the audience. In an upmarket, they're going to lag. So if we rally these products will lag. They've had a good year because we've been in a neutral market and a lot of products. We've been in a down market and a lot of products.

In a neutral market, they're going to outperform. Because those options are selling going to go in the money. You're selling options out of the money. collecting the premium. So it just adds. But if the market goes up, the more goes up, they're going to have to cost those, cover them at a higher cost, and you'll lose money. So upmarket it, underperforms, neutral market. It stays kind of neutral. You get a little bit alpha, but in a down market, it really overperforming. But a great example, so you have the JEPB, right?

So it tells me that people are comfortable, people want to buy some protection. That's what it tells me, essentially. I mean, the downside, you keep your exposure and you make a little bit of money. Yeah, what I can't say is certainly, I think you raise some great point. But what I will say is, I mean, stepping back, I mean, we are seeing a large amount of product development. I think you kind of touched on a little bit. Record product development this year in the ETF industry, 80% plus was active. And then you have a big category, which is these option-based products, which have been a big story this year in terms of new launches. A lot of innovation there.

We see a queue still forming, some of it public, some of it non-public. So we are going to see more products like this going into 2024, without a doubt. but it puts a bigger burden on investors and their advisors to really understand what's going on with these products. They are serving a purpose, but they are not all created equal. So it could be a difference in the underlying exposure or the type of protection that you're actually getting or the income that you're seeking. And I think it's very important to understand these differences. I think the reason these things took off because of what happened in 2022, 20% down. and the SEP spooked a lot of people.

And they wanted to get protection. These things are a sort of natural, I think of behavioral economics. This is sort of the response. Oh, I still want to stay in the market, but I got to protect myself from a 20% down here. I understand that. You can look at the extreme example.

There's JEPQ, which is the NASDAG version of the S&P. Right, the Q. So it's a little bit more volatile. That would be in the middle. I think that returned 11% so far this year. But if you look at something like Kweb, right, which is Chinese tech stocks, and then you have clip,

which is the overlay. shares clip. This is a covered call version of Kweb. Kweb holds China internet stocks. Tencent and Alibaba. And then it does the same thing. It sells one month at the money call options on the full amount of the portfolio.

Correct. And the dividend is... These stocks have actually rallied this year, but there you go. The dividend is 4% a month. However, you're also down 40% on the stock. Now, it should be note that we are not including the dividend in that. That's a price, right?

That's just the price. See, that's part of the problem with this showing just the chart. You should show total return on it. But the point is that it's down because of the performance of Chinese stocks. Well, the underlying is Chinese tech stock. So if you wanted to maintain exposure in that and you just weren't writing calls against it, it's a pretty brutal year. Right. But you're probably flat to up if you're in clip because you're getting the dividend every month from selling calls, which never getting called.

Yeah. And again, folks, I want to warn you that is not indicative of your total performance. Correct. That you saw. KLIP was down and you really shouldn't. In the Ben's point, you had to really look under the hood to see what asset cost. But it's a very exciting product. All kinds of issues, simplified defiance, innovator.

They're all coming out with these products, Zaga, which is a really, really traditional hedge fund, has these yield match products. They're doing synthetic longs in Tesla. And those are getting more attention than the single stock Tesla. Yeah. So the hottest products this year were the short term. bond ETFs, the actively managed call strategies we just talked about. How about 2024? Let's spin this forward. Is this going to continue into 2024? This is the hard part, folks. It's really hard to figure out what the hot product is going to be next year. Any thoughts? Well, look, I think I sort of alluded to

at least one. I mean, certainly we are absolutely going to see more of these option-based products come to market. We see it in our own book. I can also tell you that without a doubt, there's going to be more attention paid to actively managed ETFs. We've kind of touched on this in a few different areas already in this chat, but ultimately there's going to be more issuers that are continuing to chase this trend that we're seeing and that uptick in flows. And there is an expectation, at least at the asset managers, what happens in reality, we'll see. But the asset managers are looking at this as an opportunity at this point in the market cycle to try to pick up some of those flows, capture investor intention, and ideally outperform the market. So those products

are going to continue to attract, again, a lot of attention from a marketing standpoint, and you're going to see a big percentage of the new launches certainly be actively managed. Well, we talked about zero data expiration option ATFs a few months ago. That's 50% of the option volume right now. I have grave concerns about this. I don't mind professional investors playing same-day expiration options, but when you start dragging in the retail community, I get a little worried about it. It'll be a similar education to the triple levered ETFs when they came out. And at least that lesson's been learned once, so hopefully that lesson will be learned by that

utility. We know, come on, I've been here 33 years at CNBC. The one thing you learn is everybody, there's always new people coming in who have to learn the same stupid things that everybody else knows already, but they have to learn it over again and make mistakes. That's what's depressing about, you know, the whole business of living in general. we just had a 4x ETF launch or ETN. So it's, you know, again, you're just going to continue to see more of those products as well.

I think where the trends are, I mean, obviously there's, we don't trade any Bitcoin at Wallach Beth, but I think the spot ETF is going to garner a lot of attention. And at the very least, it will bring attention to ETF. There'll be people that haven't traded an ETF before. Where their first ETF will be one of these, you know, spot ETFs. So that'll be very interesting. And then really, I think it's led by the market. If we get into a overall value market, you will see money come away from the covered calls because, of course, they'll never perform.

But there'll be other option strategies like the synthetic longs where the pright, the tickers are so high that they could start to get into those products. It just draws attention to alpha. Right. If the, right, that's the point. The ETF is a trend following business, essentially. So if the market trends up, there'll be less interest in the covered call products and more in how do you leverage the market going up, right? How would you do that? Well, I wouldn't suggest selling naked puts, so that would be the opposite trade.

And I don't think that's going to come out, and that's probably not a good idea. But, yeah, they'll just tinker the strategy with the couple calls and how they wrote it. They all actively manage, which is a good thing. See, this is part of the things I love about the ETF business and what I hate about it, because I love it because the ETAF business is maturing now. So it's a business, and they're always looking for new ways to attract new people. And yet at the same time, do we really want people going out buying naked, naked put. I know you're joking, but that's not a crazy idea necessarily.

Probably not much. I'm not a lot of way to cover it. Not necessarily legal, but there's a way around it, what you're talking about. And that will happen. Yeah, they'll come to him with ideas for sure. Yeah. I just think it's a generally going to be... Are all the good ideas gone that aren't crazy? Well, you would, four years ago, you wouldn't have thought these covered calls might have been so big. Yeah, they're left at it. I think when you mentioned it as a business, as long as you're saying as a business, don't forget the issuers are kind of the bulk of their are in these very low management fee products. This is giving them the opportunity to charge 75-bibs, 100-bibs,

and it's worth it because if you're, I'm not saying it's not taking too much. If you're a retail investor trying to write your own covered call strategy on Schwab, you know, with individual stocks, it's really hard to do. All that money in short-term bonds and money markets, their competition for dividend products. We've got plenty of dividend products that are equity products. How about any chance, Andrew, we get any inflows into? normal equity dividend products, like the spider dividend.

And how about high yield? I think you will. I think the high yield will continue because, again, the rates will at least level off in the money markets. And they're going to want to continue to get 5%. And you're only where you're going to get that is equity dividends or high yield if you're going to go to fixed income. It'll go back to just the same trade we had two, three years ago.

You'll get back. We've seen implosion to Y, G and J&K and SJNK, those same names. And like I mentioned before, you have the dividend ETFs. the cows from PACER, right? That'll produce a nice dividend. Again, we're going to have to get used to not getting 11, 12% anymore unless you're not, unless you're in one of these covered call products in the right market. But I think ETFs will offer, there'll be plenty of ETFs that will offer that equity

that will offer that 3 to 5% range. Of course, market risk, but the market should be rallying next year, I think. And then, of course, the high yield will kick into that kind of six to eight range. But again, there's risk in those names. Right now in your Goldman Sachs' markets account, you're getting. 5 and a quarter with zero risk. Let me go slightly off topic. I want to ask you about T plus one next year.

Those of you don't know, the U.S. stock market next year, it's going to go to what we now call T plus one settlement. So it means stocks will have a settlement date one day after the trade is made. Right now, the U.S. stock market has a three-day settlement period. So this is a big technological change. The market's very preoccupied with this. So I guess, Ben, what are the implications for ETFs? and the markets in general.

It's been a big initiative at the bank, and as you said, certainly May of 2024, we're going to see this change implemented. And we service over $1.7 trillion in ETF assets and run a proprietary tech stack to support all these assets and provide that servicing. It's been a huge initiative for us and the industry. What investors really need to know is really probably a couple things. One is, you know, we think the biggest impact certainly is going to be an international equities. So if you think about any markets that will not be on that T plus one market.

Right now, Europe is T plus two, right? So when they are, when the U.S. moves to T plus one, obviously there's a mismatch and settlement. And, you know, the potential outcome there is that you could see impacts on liquidity because of the way the market structure is designed and the way that the liquidity providers create and redeem ETFs. It also has to do with the FX and the timing of that. But ultimately, we think that the market will adapt and provide, you know, and step in to provide that liquidity. But it is something to watch, and I think it's going to be more, again,

on those international ETFs and on an ETF to ETF basis. So, again, that's probably the biggest thing that investors should be aware of. I just want to emphasize Andrew. This is a good thing going from three plus three plus one. And those of you don't get confused about all of this. I'll make it simple. You want shorter settlement because this guarantees that,

you know that you got your stuff sooner. So if I bought 100 shares of IBM, how do I know I actually bought 100 chairs of IBM? Well, there's somebody who gets in the middle that guarantees that. But they only guarantee it after three days. Now if you guarantee it after one days, what it does is it reduces risk in the market. It's more efficient. What you call counterparty risk in the market. We've had institutional clients asking us, you can do a T1 trade.

I've been doing T1 trades for a decade. And a lot of institutions over time, there's more and more for the same reason that you said. They want the security. They want the cash in and out. There's financing charges when that cash is stuck in the middle. Maybe it's not the best thing for some of the banks that don't get to keep that spread for three days. But it's more efficient for the client. Certainly in an era of higher rates as well.

That financing charges become incredibly important. You mentioned Bitcoin. I got a sort of a obligatory Bitcoin question folks here. We're up 30 percent. You know, we're 30,000 to 40,000, right? All of this on hopes for a Bitcoin ETF. what's the timeline for a likely rollout? Either one of you, it doesn't matter.

Look, I think it's hard to predict. Obviously, everybody's waiting for the SEC, of course. You know, we are in the process of helping multiple issuers get ready, again, to provide the servicing to power these products whenever they come to market. A lot of signs seem to point, and certainly all the media seems to point to Q1, whether it's January or some point a little bit later in the year, it seems like we're getting very, very close if you look at all the filings. And, you know, when the market's ready, we'll be ready. And I think to Andy's point, I think we will see a lot of interest for these products whenever they end up making it to market. Then it'll settle down, though.

I think then it'll settle down. You'll get back to everyone saying, what's the proof of concept on the underlying asset class? And then we'll see. But certainly there's a lot of excitement for traders and the traders in those products to be able to reflect their views in an ETF. I want to get clear about what you guys do, because there's a reason I have been on. You're the biggest service provider to the ETF industry. But explain what that means to be a service provider. What do you do?

It makes you so important. Yeah, again, it can mean a lot of things. But certainly, the way I like to describe it is we provide the infrastructure to power up the ETFs. And again, as I mentioned, it's over $1.7 trillion of assets. And what does that mean? It means custody. clear and settled trades. It means accounting.

We value and provide the net acid value. You settle, right. The point is, when you're looking up the price of your ETF, they're the ones, you're the ones that actually settle and drives now. We are the golden source, right, for that price. Financial statements and ultimately the ETF creation redemption orders. So when the liquidity providers come to trade any of the ETS we service, they're coming to our desk, and we're effectively the tip of the spear when it comes to crossing the orders.

iceberg underneath the surface that you see when you do with ETFs and with stocks too but you take care of all that stuff to make sure when when you're buying that ETF you make sure that you're there making sure what the price is right calculating the price you do custodial work too now for the Bitcoin ETF you're not going to do the custodian work right that's correct you like we are simply providing the fund services right X custody right Okay, so I know that gets a little technical, folks, but it's an important distinction. Anyhow, the point is, you're the firm that provides all the management underneath for everybody.

That's exactly right. It's a very important business, actually. It's really the guts of, it's, it's, all the stuff you don't see. It's like the plumbing behind the walls at the New York Stock Exchange. Like the place runs on massive amounts of technology, but you never see it. It's all behind the walls there. You kind of, you know, do that kind of service. Same thing at B&Y Mellon.

Yeah. Now it's time to round out the conversation with some analysis and perspective to help you better understand ETFs. This is the market's 102 portion of the podcast. We'll be conducting or continuing the conversation with Ben Slavin from BNY Mellon. Ben, we talked about a lot of things on the show, but one of the things we didn't talk about is capital gains. And we got another reminder of how tax efficient ETFs are for tax loss harvesting. I know you were telling me about this. Of the top 15 ETF issuers, which is 99% of the market, looking at almost 1900 ETFs, only 24 distributed capital gains.

That is a remarkable number. Explain what that means to the viewers. This is why people love ETS. Look, tax efficiency is one of those attributes that is really key from an ETF investing standpoint and why investors love them. and this year is case in point, right? So the stat you just quoted, you know, is really saying that those ETFs are not going to pay any distribution. So on your 1099 at the end of the year, there's going to be no capital gain that's attributed that you have to pay tax on, whether you sell or not. Mutual funds, on the other hand, it's a different story.

And traditionally, you know, ETFs have really, this is an area where they've really excelled, because of the way E. F's work. And so like on the mutual fund for Rapper for this year, you have over 200 mutual funds that are going to pay a capital gain distribution of more than 4% of their net asset value. And that's whether you sell it or not, you're going to get that tax bill. So on taxable accounts, it's critical. Because they were involved in trading activity during the year that generated essentially capital gains. Exactly. The fund manager, right. The mutual fund is trading.

even if you as the investor just bought, you know, and hold that. And in an ETF situation, you have the market maker engaging in creations and redemptions that don't create a taxable event, right? Explain this. This is the critical difference here. Again, this is all about how ETFs work. So as probably many investors know and maybe some don't, ETFs are created, most of them are created and redeemed in kind. So in pretty much almost all developed markets around the world, it's the market. maker that's delivering in or taking out a basket of stocks or bonds. And when that happens, there's no underlying tax event to the ETF. In mutual funds, you buy and sell in cash,

and that can create a taxable event inside the mutual bond. It's really remarkably simple, because essentially the market maker is the one that's doing the activity, not the fund manager. And they essentially are, they're in this tax-free bubble, essentially. by engaging in the creation redemption process themselves. It's the beauty of the whole ETF industry. It's really. Yeah, it's actually interesting. I think it's one of the things that actually doesn't happen in the ETF market in Europe,

where ETFs are created and redeemed in cash, and that tax benefit isn't there in the same way it is in the U.S. All the other attributes of ETFs apply, you know, the liquidity and low cost and all that, but it is a little bit different over there. And one of the reasons why it hasn't been quite as strong in Europe as it is. in the U.S. I want to ask you about what might happen in 2024, something else besides, you know, besides bond ETFs or money market ETFs. How about some kind of more alternative products coming in?

I got a lot of questions about access to private markets, for example. You know, there's an alarming lack of companies going public and remaining in the private markets. And private equity is funding these companies. companies because of the cost of going public and compliance and companies don't necessarily want to go public. Is there any way for an ETF to tap into the private market? Yeah, it's a great question, and this comes up a lot. So the way I typically like to answer this is, you know, ETFs are not a magic wrapper. I mean, if the underlying is a liquid, so too will the ETF. It's the same problem that you have, because again, ETF's trade and exchange, daily liquidity, daily valuation. And, you know,

what we have seen is those investors that are certainly looking for private credit, which has been a hot space this year, on our platform and at B&Y Mellon, obviously, one of our affiliates is Pershing, right, which is a very large platform servicing RIAs and sort of other investors, has certainly been these interval funds, which have kind of exploded to try to try to get investors access to private credit and other similar types of strategies. But it's just very, very challenging to get those types of assets into ETFs because of the valuation, because of the liquidity. But, you know, we have seen, though, certain forms of alternative, like exposure coming to ETFs, like managed futures in the like. So how do you use?

Smoving out the price dislocations, the valuations is hard. But other ETFs did this in the bond market. I mean, bank loan, banknotes, or what would you call them, you know, short-term loan? from banks. They get put into ETFs. We get obscure bond funds that have supposedly fairly illiquid underlying bonds, and yet the market's been able to price ETFs, and sometimes ETF pricing is more efficient

than the underlying bond market. We had this complaint for years. Oh, if there's a liquidity crunch, these ETS will stop trading because the underlying won't have enough liquidity, and it turns out the ETFs traded perfectly fine. That wagged, that tail wagged the dog. Yeah. Well, Look, I mean, this is one of the things I love about ETFs. You're, you know, finding yourself, you know, in a situation where there's just a natural sort of limit, right?

So, ETFs have democratized a bunch of asset classes that were difficult to access and not just sort of, I'll just call them less liquid types of assets like bank loans, but even things like gold, right? We saw GLD come forward as the first way to sort of equitize and bring sort of gold exposure to the masses. but there is, there is limits. I think if there is a way, I can almost tell you with certainty that the ETF issuers will try to bring that. There's my prediction. It's a tough call, but some kind of alternative EETF around the private markets will emerge in 2024.

That's a bold call, folks, because as Ben said, it's not easy to do. But if it can be done, they'll figure out a way to do it. Ben, thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it. Ben Slavin from BNY Mellon. That does it for this week's ETF Edge, the podcast. Thanks for listening. Join us again next week.

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