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Industry Research

When ETF Stopped Meaning Passive

ETFs were long synonymous with passive market beta, but that reflected their early use rather than an inherent feature of the wrapper. As indexing became more sophisticated, replication expanded beyond simple equities and managers began making portfolio decisions directly inside ETFs. This evolution created the infrastructure and flexibility that later allowed active and alternative strategies to emerge in exchange-traded form.

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Industry Research

What Could Scale in Europe’s Alternative ETF Market?

Europe’s alternative ETF opportunity starts with an unusual mismatch. The region has decades of experience allocating to regulated liquid alternative strategies, while its ETF market is now capable of carrying genuinely active investment processes. Yet relatively little sits at the intersection of the two. Europe looks less like a market waiting to discover alternatives than a conversion market: one in which strategies investors already understand gain a new route into portfolios when the ETF genuinely improves how they are accessed and used.

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Industry Research

AltETF Market Briefing: 31st August–13th September 2026

A global CLO ETF was the clearest launch of the fortnight, broadening exchange-listed access to specialist credit despite sitting somewhat outside AltETF’s core focus. Elsewhere, a euro-hedged commodity strategy widened access for continental investors, CoinShares expanded its systematic investment capabilities, and a major UK platform opened to crypto ETNs.

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Industry Research

The Evolution of Hedge Fund Access

For much of the history of hedge fund investing, choosing the strategy largely answered the question of structure. An allocator wanting specialist global macro exposure would typically allocate to a global macro hedge fund. The same applied across equity long/short, managed futures, relative value and event-driven strategies. The investment process and the vehicle used to deliver it were effectively bundled together. That relationship has gradually loosened.

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