One of the key themes in 2025 has been diversification and this means that investors may need to look at how they can diversify their portfolios. This could mean investors turning to international ETFs and factor ETFs as they may pose more attractive opportunities and ignite trends. Financial experts believe there is indeed a driving demand for actively managed fixed income ETFs. In addition, all eyes have been on the power of thematic investing and how investors view megatrends. And lastly, the nuclear industry is seeing a uranium demand that is seeing rapid growth. It’s time to take a closer look at it all.

Let’s start with actively managed fixed income ETFs.

Colby McVey, VP Sr. Client Portfolio Manager from Franklin Templeton says “According to Morningstar through June of 2025, fixed income ETFs have captured about 175 billion, a little over 500 billion in ETF flows. So one third of the total flows are ETFs. So we've seen strong growth and adoption from investors for fixed income ETFs. When you look at what's driving demand for this, I think it goes back to the SEC pass in the ETF role in 2019. You know, that really streamlined the approval process for active ETFs level to playing field operationally with passive ETFs. And so, you know, investors can benefit now from increased cost efficiency, tax efficiency, the transparency of holdings, you know, flexibility as, you know, the ability to adjust portfolios more dynamically. I think that's all contributed to demand. Regarding the potential edge of active management, I think we're in uncertain markets, you know, interest rate uncertainty, potential M&A and corporate actions, tariff-related impacts, you know, active management can offer alpha potential through security selection, sector allocation, yield curve management, whereas passive fixed income ETFs are more issuance-weighted. So the largest debtors dominate the benchmark. That increases risk if those issuers face some financial problems. So I just think that active managers have more tools at their disposal to navigate potentially challenging markets.

Meanwhile, Steve Wreford, CFA, and Sarbjit Nahal, at Lazard Asset Management discuss how active management plays into investing in megatrends. “Active management matters a great deal when investing in megatrends because the world is constantly changing. Our team has an average of 23 years experienced investors can count on us because of that longing experience. Our edge in this regard is the 4,500 company meetings that we hold every year. Our conversations with companies allow us to build a picture of the world. What's happening in terms of capital investments, in terms of research and development, and what are the realities that companies are seeing on the ground? We're asking the company management teams, where are you allocating capital that will shape the world five to 10 years from today? Think about the biggest changes that you are seeing in your day-to-day lives. What we are trying to do as investors is identify and capture those changes. Everything from semi-conductures through to smart glasses, through to artificial intelligence and new developments that we're seeing with regards to big data, as well as software agents and apps. The biggest megatrends of the next decade are available for investors today. You just need to know where to look, but you also need to implement it correctly. So it's not enough to simply bind to a nice story. The reality of this, which is that most trends are just a nice story. They don't actually translate into investment returns, and we have one of the most experienced team on the street in making that transition from a nice story to returns for your clients.”

Lastly, John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management talks about a possible uranium craze. “We went from an industry that was basically growing maybe 1% per year, the latest forecast is calling for 5% growth per year to 2040. That is being driven by all kinds of factors, new builds, restarts, life extensions. On the supply side, the question is: How is the industry going to meet this growing demand? It is a challenge because right before the conference, we had the two largest uranium miners in the world, both signaling they're having some production challenges or limitations. That is a wake-up call that we need to see more production, we need to see higher prices to incentivize more uranium mining. That was a real, I think, theme of the conference, that to meet these big growth aspirations, we also need to make big investments in uranium mining, which obviously bodes well for the sector.”

Certainly plenty for all of us to think about in the ETF world.

Author: Asset TV
Source: Top Picks: Trends Powering ETF Growth