This issue of The Cerulli Edge—U.S. Monthly Product Trends analyzes mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) product trends as of May 2024 and explores financial advisors’ adoption of cryptocurrency.

Highlights from this research:  

• With $19.4 trillion in assets, the mutual fund structure continues to be an industry behemoth (even if product development is focused elsewhere), growing 3.3% in May via strong market returns.

• U.S. ETFs closed May with $9.0 trillion in assets, a new record for the structure, gathering strong flows ($89 billion in May) across a range of exposures, which increasingly include active products.

• With fees mostly within a small margin, brand familiarity is the differentiating factor that decides winners in the passive digital asset product ecosystem, and the same should be expected for future products. Spot-price ETH ETFs generally are not expected to see the same success as that of spot-price BTC ETFs, given the lower uptake that was seen for futures-based products and due to the lower total return expected relative to owning the digital assets directly with staking. 13.7% of financial advisors are using or discussing cryptocurrency with their clients, including only 2.6% making recommendations themselves, while another 26.4% expect to be able to discuss or use cryptocurrency investments with their clients in the future, still leaving more than half who never expect to do so.