Advisors did not slow down on exchange-traded funds in the second quarter. They added more of them, and pointed the money somewhere new, according to AdvizorPro’s Q2 2026 RIA ETF Trends report.
Key Takeaways:
- Advisor ETF holdings climbed to 92.9 funds per firm, with three times as many advisors adding funds as trimming them.
- Technology gained 230 net RIA relationships while commodities and digital-asset funds lost ground.
- A SpaceX-linked space fund reached 147 RIA holders in its first full quarter on the market.
The average registered investment advisor firm held 92.9 ETFs by the end of June, according to AdvizorPro. That’s up from 88.4 in the first quarter. Some 63.4% of advisors added funds, while just 18.2% trimmed them, a wider gap than the roughly 2-to-1 split seen three months earlier.
See more: What Advisors Can Learn From the Investor Return Gap
Portfolio turnover held at 11.6% for the quarter, only slightly below the first quarter’s 12.3%, AdvizorPro’s data showed. Advisors added ETF positions equal to 13.9% of prior holdings while dropping 8.7%. That left a net gain of nearly 25,000 positions across 5,398 RIAs tracked in both quarters.
That kind of broad buying lifted almost everyone, and all 10 of the largest ETF issuers gained advisors this quarter. That’s a turnaround from the first quarter, when the largest issuers barely moved or lost ground, according to the report.
iShares still counts the most RIA relationships at 4,991, followed by State Street Investment Management at 4,737 and Vanguard at 4,599. Invesco posted the largest gain among the top 10, adding 95 net advisor relationships, AdvizorPro said.
Advisors Pivot Toward Technology and Semiconductors
Underneath that steady growth, the specific bets that advisors made shifted hard. AdvizorPro reported that technology added 230 net RIA relationships in the second quarter, more than any other Morningstar category.
The commodities focused category lost 103 advisors over the same stretch, and digital assets lost 86. That reverses the first quarter, when real-asset funds led the category rankings, per the report.
Within that trade, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) led the group, adding 206 RIA relationships. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) followed at 205, and the State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) added 194, according to AdvizorPro’s data. Artificial-intelligence (AI) funds gained at a similar pace, just behind the chip names.
Active Managers and New Funds Find an Opening
EntrepreneurShares posted the fastest RIA growth of any issuer with at least 50 advisors in the first quarter, expanding 115.6%, the report found. Baron Capital ranked second among issuers at 83.3%, and ProcureAM followed at 72.4%, powered by its Procure Space ETF (UFO).
Nearly all of EntrepreneurShares’ growth came from the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF (XOVR), which blends public stocks with private holdings including SpaceX. AdvizorPro’s report showed that the fund roughly doubled its advisor base from 90 to 194 firms.
Among individual funds, the iShares International Country Rotation Active ETF (CORO) posted the second-fastest growth of the quarter. It climbed from 197 advisors to 364, an 84.8% gain, the data showed.
UFO’s 72.4% pace made it the third-fastest fund overall, AdvizorPro noted. Both are young funds and demonstrate how a new strategy can gather advisor assets quickly once it fills a specific portfolio role.
CORO also topped the list of funds launched within the last three years. The Alger Concentrated Equity ETF (CNEQ) followed at 41.1%, and the FT Vest Technology Dividend Target Income ETF (TDVI) added 37.9%, according to the report.
AdvizorPro found that new-fund adoption slowed everywhere else. Only 41 tickers reached RIA portfolios for the first time in the second quarter, down from 140 in the first. Leveraged and inverse trading products made up 11 of those 41.
Advisors also kept paying up for specific outcomes. The Convergence Long/Short Equity ETF (CLSE) gained 60.9% more RIA allocators. That was the fastest pace in the priciest 10% of the ETF universe, AdvizorPro’s report found.
The VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD) grew 19.1%, and the Putnam BDC Income ETF (PBDC) grew 16.7%, per the data. Both hold business-development companies, or BDCs, which lend to and invest in small or private businesses. Most of the two funds’ sticker price traces back to costs embedded in those underlying companies, not the manager’s own fee.
Infrastructure and Small Caps Build Quietly
Outside of technology, infrastructure was the fastest-growing category by percentage, adding 133 net RIAs for 12.3% growth. The gains, AdvizorPro’s report noted, track continued spending on data centers and power grids that support the AI buildout.
Small blend added 118 RIAs, and small growth added 106. Together, the firm found, the two categories absorbed 224 net advisor relationships. Domestic small-cap stocks have extended a rally that has built through the year.
The clearest sign of how fast an idea can spread through the advisor channel came from a fund that barely existed for the quarter.
Tema’s Space Innovators ETF (NASA) launched at the end of the first quarter with a direct stake in SpaceX. It reached 147 RIA holders by the end of June. That’s more than any other fund that came to market this year, the report found.
Originally posted on ETF Trends
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