The Open Outcry

Why ETFs Are Winning Institutional Attention

May 27, 2026

Why are pensions, insurers and family offices increasingly turning to ETFs — not just tactically, but at the core of portfolio construction? Bipan Rai sits down with Daniel Stanley, head of institutional sales and services at BMO Global Asset Management, to discuss liquidity, portable alpha”, fixed income ETFs and how institutions are reshaping the active-versus-passive debate. This podcast was recorded on May 272026.

Alpha: A measure of performance often considered the active return on an investment. It gauges the performance of an investment against a market index or benchmark which is considered to represent the market’s movement as a whole. The excess return of an investment relative to the return of a benchmark index is the investment’s alpha. 

Duration: A measure of the sensitivity of the price of a fixed income investment to a change in interest rates. Duration is expressed as number of years. The price of a bond with a longer duration would be expected to rise (fall) more than the price of a bond with lower duration when interest rates fall (rise).

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The Select Sector SPDR® Trust consists of eleven separate investment portfolios (each a Select Sector SPDR® ETF” or an ETF” and collectively the Select Sector SPDR® ETFs” or the ETFs”). Each Select Sector SPDR® ETF is an index fund” that invests in a particular sector or group of industries represented by a specified Select Sector Index. The companies included in each Select Sector Index are selected on the basis of general industry classification from a universe of companies defined by the S&P 500®. The investment objective of each ETF is to provide investment results that, before expenses, correspond generally to the price and yield performance of publicly traded equity securities of companies in a particular sector or group of industries, as represented by a specified market sector index. 

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You cannot invest directly in an index.

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